


amped and wired, part one

by josiebelladonna



Series: now it's dark [4]
Category: Anthrax (US Band), Bandom, Metallica
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Black Comedy, Blow Jobs With Teeth, Body Horror, Coming In Pants, Corpses, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Cybernetics, Dark Comedy, F/M, For Want of a Nail, Gallows Humor, Ghost Sex, Ghosts, Hand Jobs, Inappropriate Humor, Inspired by Real Events, Kinda, Lapdance, Not Suitable/Safe For Work, Older Woman/Younger Man, Orgasm Control, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Public Sex, Sex Toys, Sexual Humor, Sorry Not Sorry, Strip Chess, Strippers & Strip Clubs, Sugar Mama, Talking To Dead People, The Author Regrets Nothing, Threesome - F/F/M, Threesome - F/M/M, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Unreliable Narrator, joey being really adorable and sweet and stuff, that's an understatement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:47:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 27
Words: 56,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25020376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josiebelladonna/pseuds/josiebelladonna
Summary: subtitle: paranoia time.He was let go from his band at the worst possible time, but then he found her just laying there one evening. He took her home only for things to go horribly,horriblywrong thereafter.
Relationships: Joey Belladonna/Original Female Character, Lars Ulrich/Original Female Character
Series: now it's dark [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1519889
Kudos: 3





	1. dead man walking

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in between chapters of now it's dark when that was being written last fall—a lot of elements of the original fic have been omitted and the story itself is _completely_ different. i feel like this very easily could've been now it's dark but... eh, what're you gonna do. i needed to get serious for a little bit, get that darkness out of me and make joey a serious hero; he is my hero after all 💜  
> the heavy topics i explored in the original story (like joey getting fired, lars undergoing a divorce, the cyberpunk elements, and the presence of death) are all going to be treated in a humorous fashion so my best advice is: if you're gonna read this, please, _please_ have an iron stomach. pc culture is out of control at the moment, perhaps more so than what it's out against, and we all need a laugh right now and i need a laugh especially—nightmare fuel fetishists have their breaking points, too.  
> this is like a dark comedy fused with vulgar/sexual comedy and a touch of surrealism. it's easy to go overboard with it but as seth macfarlane said once, "it can't be all in the same place", so even though i have often incorporated dark humor into my writing in the past, i'm gonna do what i can here to put it in the forefront.  
> oh! and if you're curious, the title is a line from the chorus of anthrax's song time (which is completely different from got the time).
> 
> i own nothing, save for the original characters i came up with, and even if i did... baby, you know i'd enjoy every minute of it.
> 
> cast:  
> joey belladonna // former vocalist of anthrax; bachelor from upstate new york  
> lars ulrich // former drummer of metallica; cuckolded man and joey's sidekick  
> scott ian  
> frank "frankie" bello  
> charlie benante  
> *danny and the bush man are both mentioned, but in kind of a throwaway fashion, though
> 
> originals:  
> maya sorenson: english writer and macguffin of the story  
> cindy “cindy lou who” ridgeway: stripper at black orchid whom joey has a big crush on  
> gwendolyn "fair guinevere" ridgeway: cindy's half sister; also a stripper  
> louise “louie louie” jackson: cindy's best friend  
> leela hamilton, better known as simply mrs. hamilton: cindy's mother and head stripper at black orchid  
> angeline belotti: reporter from the new york times
> 
> ***update 1/17/21: given it takes place in the same universe as now it's dark, but it's from a more comedic standpoint, i'm moving this one, as well as part two, the illustrations, and the dead trilogy under the moniker of "now it's dark".  
> you know. just so it's more organized.

I had hung up the phone when the reality had sunk in for me. Charlie's words still lingered with me. I was out. Fired. Fired like a piece of earthenware no less.

I thought I had it made with Anthrax. We were to be the biggest metal band in the world, we were running parallel with Metallica and I was going to be the guy out front with his long black curls waving in the wind and underneath my headdress. The quintet straight outta New York with a sense of humor and a sense of grinding if ya know what I mean. We were brothers, brothers from other mothers, but this proved to me otherwise. I got fired for not having a tough enough sounding voice, hailing from upstate New York instead of the City even though I made the effort to moving closer to them, not having any idea what thrash metal was, and being handsome.

I leaned back in my recliner chair for a moment in hopes to process a little more of what had happened. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something moving next to me. I glanced over to find Vera drifting out from the hallway.

I fetched up a sigh as her body withered and faded for a second only for her to return to view. Her hair streaked behind her head as if there was wind in here, but there wasn't any wind. Her gaping eyes never exactly gave me the creeps, but rather they made my skin itch.

Sometimes I wonder if the four ghosts who lived with me and appeared whenever they damn well pleased were even aware that I was the one here first.

Or maybe they were here first, I have no idea. But either way, I never could recall the first time I actually saw Vera and felt frightened. I was always like, “what're you doing in my house? Get the fuck away from me!”

I always knew it was awful to see her as that but ya gotta cut me some slack, especially now.

I folded my arms over my chest and watched her drift away into the shadow. I wondered if Mr. Lang was going to show up. I lived with ghosts and I wondered when I would have to face the music and become one myself.

My head felt like a mess, an absolute mess, more of a hot mess than the hair atop my head. I wanted to eat something but the only thing I could stomach at the moment was that little box of Mike n' Ikes my buddy Brick gave me. Red and white and bad for the teeth, that's my buddy Brick, I, I mean, the Mike n' Ikes.

But I didn't even feel like eating those.

“Fuck it,” I said aloud and then climbed to my feet. I was in fact already wearing clothes—if you count the box of candy as something to cover my crotch with. So I got dressed and headed out to the cold for a walk to help clear my head. Often times, I would take a walk about the apartment complex I lived in and wonder which of these dumpsters Vera's body lay in, but then I would abort that thought.

Sorry, it's just that thinking about what happened to me has put me in a fog that was something like the fog around me. Awful chilly for a spring day.

This day was in fact something else, too: that news over the phone got me off of the property, down the walkway and towards the front lawn and the sidewalk. I kept on walking past the hockey rink, which I knew Brick and I were going to have to tackle again at some point. That ice ain't gonna cut itself.

The wind picked up as I neared that one part of 'Swaygo that my parents always wanted me to avoid growing up. The one with the constant red lights and incessant smell of Jack, even on the outside. Well, I ain't exactly a kid anymore and the kid in me felt more far gone than Vera, and thus I turned the corner. The wind really picked up there and it was getting dark over me. There was a strip joint at the very end of the block, called Black Orchid. I always wondered what went down in there. I shivered and tugged the collar of my jacket up to my ears. If I stood alone and without any sort of coherent feeling within me, I figured I might as well find a helping hand wherever I could.

The sky grew dark as I neared the end of the block and past a sex shop. I swear, the rain from Lake Ontario came here to upstate New York whenever one of us even so much as thought of it. Rain kept falling onto my head even with my yanking the hood over me.

I thought I tripped over something when I realized what lay there on the sidewalk. I staggered back to see her laying there outside the front of the sex shop. The rain came down almost all at once right then.

“Hey, are you alright?” I asked her over the roar of the rain. Her black hair spread over her face like the tentacles of an octopus. Her eyes had pinched shut and her lips were parted a bit to let the rain into her mouth.

Otherwise, I could tell she was gorgeous.

“Are you alright?” I repeated as I crouched down before her. Nothing. I shook her a bit. Her skin was ghostly pale and sickly looking, and her chest had no movement whatsoever to it.

She was dead.

Well, I can't just leave her here!

I was close to home anyway. I scooped her off of the ground and held her close to my body. Even through my big overcoat, she felt cold to the touch, like she had been laying there a long time. I put my arms underneath her knees and doubled back down the block back to my apartment.

It was tricky getting the keys out of my pocket and unlocking the front door with one hand, but by some black magic, I managed to do it while cradling her in my arms.

I didn't really wanna put her on my couch, not 'cause I'm worried 'bout the couch but 'cause I'm worried 'bout the couch. I worried about it breaking underneath her 'cause it had been breaking for a while now. Before I got my ass handed to me, I was the bachelor of the band and the one who literally got his ass handed to him whenever he felt like it.

I closed the door with my ass and hurried into the kitchen, still with her in my arms. Using the point of my right boot, I tugged out the chair at the little table there and I set her down there. I propped her upright and her drenched head tilted back, right onto my crotch no less. I pushed her head forward and she leaned onto the top of the table. Her head lay there on the surface and I decided not to fuck around a second longer.

I figured if anyone asked, I would say that she's not my girlfriend: she's just a dead girl who happens to be my friend.

Oh, wait no. Yes? Maybe. I dunno. I would have to make it up as I went along.

I just wanted to get my ass to Black Orchid and have dinner and a nap.


	2. pussy whipped

The whole place smelled of jager, peppermint, and hot sex. The black and soft beige color scheme of the club welcomed me upon walking in for this evening. Bright lit and lovely and welcoming for someone as fucked up as me.

I was a boy in a strange place, but I needed to do something for myself: I had snuck in and took my seat next to the back door. I tugged the collar up to my chin.

Oh, sexuality take me over. I've got the music within me and the girls there at Black Orchid. I tucked my feet underneath me. Granted, I could watch _Night Shift_ every night if given the choice but hearing that news prior to then sorta put a damper on things.

I had no idea why I was overthinking the hell out of this. I'm a big boy: I should be able to relax and let go for a little bit.

I sank down in the seat and rested my feet flat on the floor before me. I leaned back against the smooth bricks of the wall behind me and watched one of the strippers mosey on past me. She was a little black girl with a head full of tight curls and golden eye shadow over her big dark sensual eyes; she showed me a pretty little wave and blew me a kiss. I felt a little warm at the sight of her.

But then another one strode on past me when she stopped right before me.

She was this cute little thing with long dark hair down towards her waist; she had these good sized tits clothed with one of those low cut crop tops that tie up at the bottom. I liked the way the lower part of her belly had a nice little curve to it, and I liked the way she wore that little black leather mini skirt and those stilettos. Dark and lovely. That's the best way I can describe her.

She knelt down before me so she could look straight into my face. Her round face resembled to the full moon and her eyes resembled to little black beetles. Her long finger nails had a nice thick coat of fiery red nail polish; I took a second look as she sat down next to me and leaned in closer to me. I could smell the soft soapy perfume wafting off of her neck and her wrists.

“Want some apple pie?” she offered to me. I swallowed at the sight of her. She was gorgeous.

“I'd love some apple pie,” I replied to her and I couldn't resist the smile on my face. She eyed my chest and my stomach and then she showed me a warm welcoming smile.

“I'm Cindy,” she introduced herself.

“I'm Joey. Cindy Lou Who.”

She raked the hair on the side of her head.

“Cindy Lou Who, and Joe Mama,” she teased me with a point at my chest. That nail sparkled underneath the orange light on the ceiling over me.

“Joe Mama's here wondering where his apple pie is,” I retorted and I curled my toes in my shoes the second the words left my lips. But she took it in stride and she gestured for the little black girl to come on over. The warmth in my stomach turned into butterflies.

“Hey, Gwen, this is Joe Mama,” she introduced me, “Joey, this is my half sister Gwendolyn.”

“Ooh, sisters!” I declared as she took to my right. “Fair Guinevere.”

“Related through our daddy,” Cindy told me. “Mr. Ridgeway.”

“Who's yer mama?” I asked her.

“Well, you're Joe Mama,” she teased me as she ran her finger down my chest.

“You're so sexy, Joey,” Gwendolyn said to me; I noticed some golden glitter painted upon those full lips.

“Sexy Joey—I like that one better,” I complimented her.

“You're really, really sexy, baby,” she said to me as she unzipped my jacket.

“You're going at this pretty quickly, baby doll,” I said to her, and that was when Cindy set one high heel over my lap so she was straddling me. Oh, boy, here we go.

 _Relax, Joe. Just relax. You came here for a reason_.

I wasn't planning on having dry jeans anyway. The last time I came that hard in my jeans was when I first searched through that Sears catalogue for that drum kit.

She was gave it to me at a slow pace: I let her rub her ass across my lap first. That smooth porcelain skin right over the top of the denim, right before me; the skin reddened right before my eyes. And then she turned around, and she ran her fingers down my chest and onto my stomach. Gwendolyn did the favor of undoing my jeans.

Never thought I would have two girls fondling me at the same time. I held still as Gwendolyn caressed me down. Cindy's nails raked my skin: the edges of the nails felt smooth and fine from intensive filing. She even tickled me a bit with those nails.

She bowed her head and opened her mouth over my head. Her tongue slithered around the side of my shaft; I turned to Gwendolyn as she nudged the collar of my jacket and my shirt out of the way for her to touch me. That smooth tongue coaxed a soft sound from me that resembled to a note that I sang on Anthrax's first album. I relaxed as Gwendolyn kissed the sliver of bare skin on my chest. She ran her hands underneath the collar of my shirt: the skin on her hands felt something like silk.

“Oh, baby, you're really hot,” she whispered into my face; when she said that, I felt Cindy sinking her teeth into my skin. I gasped at the feeling and yet it felt so good. Her teeth and her nails tickled me and it made my toes curl some more inside of my shoes. I knew I was about to come again but then Gwendolyn ran her hands down my chest and my stomach.

“Don't do it yet, baby,” she coaxed me; she peered over her shoulder at Cindy, who then went in deep with me. I sucked in my stomach and braced myself to keep myself from coming all over Cindy's face.

“Don't—do it,” Gwendolyn's voice was as light as a feather. “Don't—you dare.”

I nibbled on my bottom lip as Cindy lifted her head so Gwendolyn could do the same thing for me. She loomed right before me: a part of me wanted to undo that tie underneath her cleavage, but she was about to untie it for herself. I could feel it building at the base of my spine; Gwendolyn's tongue resembled to velvet, smooth silky velvet that tickled me even more than those nails and those teeth.

“Am I good?” I sputtered.

“Oh, Joey, you're the best I ever had,” Cindy said to me in a husky voice. She undid the tie part of her top and showed me her dark nipples. “Have at it, baby boy.”

I was about to turn into jelly. Just call me Jelly Bellardini if I didn't do something.

I let out a soft whimper and then ran my tongue along the right taut nipple. My tongue and then my lips. I did the same for her left. Smooth luxurious flesh.

Gwendolyn lifted up and Cindy pushed me down onto my back; my black curls fanned out from my head and Gwendolyn straddled my hips. She took her seat, even as I had my legs dangling over the edge of the seat. She gyrated over my erection; I gazed right into that golden make up and the devilish look of pleasure upon her face. I could feel myself coming again, but then she lifted up again to stop me.

She gestured behind her to Cindy, who had stripped off her miniskirt and straddled me so far that she showed me the full extent her lips. She spread her legs as far as they could go.

“I'm goin' deep with you, baby boy,” she begged to me. “I'm gonna lift you up and do it.”

I was reluctant a bit but I gripped onto her thighs and brought those fiery red lips down to me. She was as wet as Lake Ontario. I needed to feel wet. I needed to feel all of this. I needed to feel her grinding on me.

I knew I would get off by the time Gwendolyn took a shot behind me. Cindy lifted up and I let go of her legs.

Panting hard, I tilted my head back from the whirlwind of euphoria about my whole upper body. Like going on stage for four hours straight. I breathed heavy as both girls loomed over my face as they gave me kisses on the forehead, one right after the other.

“Good boy,” Gwendolyn whispered into my ear.

“You're the best I ever had, baby,” Cindy repeated again and showed me a wink and a pucker of her lips. She was utterly gorgeous.

Both girls stepped away from me and I lay there still flat on my back with my dick hanging out from my pants. At some point, I was going to have to venture into the bathroom and clean off the inside of my undies: I needed to do laundry soon anyway.

I let out a low whistle and ran my fingers through my hair again. I sat upright and put my dick back into my pants and zipped up enough for some modesty. I glanced around the room for the men's room; but then again, there was a bunch of paper napkins on the table next to me. I was in a strip joint anyways.

One was all it took to clean up the inside there; all the times I reached down my jeans to jerk off finally payed off.

I felt someone staring at me from across the room: I lifted my gaze to the chubby guy at the bar watching me. He held a glass of scotch in one hand and had a warm blush about his face. I recognized him from somewhere, like his smooth long hair and his soft green eyes gave me a feeling of familiarity.

I crumpled the napkin and stood to my feet. I tossed the napkin into the trash bin on the floor off to the left and headed towards him. He gave his hair a toss and then he took a sip of scotch for himself.

“Man, you got it good over there,” he said as he set down his glass. I knew right away he wasn't from around here: he wasn't from upstate New York.

“Yeah, I'll say,” I replied to him as I took a seat next to him at the bar. I caught glimpse of a silver wedding band on his left hand.

“Why are you here?” I asked him, to which he took a glimpse down at his hand.

“It's complicated,” he answered.

“We've got time, though,” I pointed out.

“It's true. We do.” He showed me a thoughtful look. “Joey, right?”

“Yeah. Drawing a blank on your name, though.”

“Lars.”

“Lars! That was it. The—The drummer from Metallica.”

“Formerly. I got fired last year.”

“Oh, damn,” I quipped. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I got fired myself.”

“Oh, yeah, that's right! I was talking to Scott just a little bit ago and he said they're in search for a new singer. What the fuck is going on?”

I shook my head. “No idea.”

He took another swig of scotch and then he turned to me again.

“I'm also here because I am—I am in need of comfort myself. But for different reason. I have been—pussy whipped. Cuckolded. Cheated on.”

I glanced about the room. We were the only ones seated at the bar. It only made sense to me to talk more to him and get to know this guy a little better.

“Care to share?” I asked him in a low voice.

“We do have time,” he echoed me.


	3. never go back

I leaned back in the stool next to Lars as he finished off the rest of his scotch. He turned his head to me and carved a thin lipped smile upon his face.

“So tell me,” he started, “what is a good looking, strapping young lad such as yourself doing here with a fugly doofus like myself at this bar here?”

“You're not fugly, Lars,” I promised him. “Believe me—when you've got a beak of a nose like this—” I gestured to my own straight Roman nose. “—I can assure you that you're not ugly.”

“Oh, come off it, Joey,” he scoffed, “you're a fucking stud! With all your wiry jet black curls and this sun kissed skin—this thin, elegant, lush body, and a voice that sends a thousand ships.”

“The other way?” I teased him.

“No, our way! You are very, very sexy, man—I mean, those two strippers all over you should've proven it enough.”

“I didn't sing to those girls, though,” I pointed out.

“You should've,” he chided. “Tell you what—” He peered over his shoulder. “—the next time you and Cindy have a moment together, whenever that will be, sing to her while she's giving you a tug of the hose.”

“Do you bet on it?” I challenged him.

“Do I bet on it?” he echoed. “Sure.” He squinted his eyes at me. “What's your sport, baseball?”

“Nah, that was Frankie. I'm a hockey player.”

“Hockey, that was it! Well, I'm a tennis player and we have our loving scoring system. If I place a bet on it, and if you sing to Cindy while she's blowing you, we will be thirty love.”

“So if I deke her in the ass, that means we're thirty and love?” I suggested.

“Nah, we are fifteen and love because you just blew her,” he explained, “and you didn't serve the ball again.”

“So… if I throw my ball—or rather, the puck—into her court, we'll be thirty and love?”

“Nah, we are thirty and fifteen is what we are,” he further explained with a running of the tip of this finger along the rim of his glass, “because I threw my ball into your court. I made a suggestion to you and you not only fulfilled it but you also fulfilled yourself.”

“How would we even the scores, though?” I asked him as I felt my head beginning to spin.

“Well, like you said, we have time. So, tell me, Joseph. What is your—skeleton in the closet, dare I say?”

“I live with ghosts and there's a soaking wet dead body in my kitchen,” I confessed with a straight face.

“Now, how in the world did you manage that?” he quipped with a raise of the eyebrow. I hesitated, and I thought of what he had said to me earlier.

“Yeah, but how'd ya manage to rid of yer girl, though?” I retorted.

“I will tell you,” he started with a twinkle in his eye, “if you tell me what you are willing to bet.”

I hesitated again. I didn't have much money on me at the moment, just enough for a drink and maybe something to eat, and having my ass booted out from Anthrax was only going to cut off the money flow, or at least curb the shit out of it.

“Twenty bucks?” I suggested.

“Twe—” He scowled at me. “Joey.”

“Fifteen?”

“Joey.” He closed his eyes.

“—five?” I asked in a small voice.

“Joey, look where we are.”

“We're in a strip joint—what more is there to it?”

“Oh, but not just any old strip joint,” he pointed out. “You saw Cindy and Gwendolyn. You know how sexy they are. You saw their make up—” Right as he said that, a slender woman with a short bob of silvery blonde hair strolled up to us from behind the bar. She wore this black leather corset that looked like it was made just for her, plus elbow high black leather gloves and matching thigh high boots. She smelled of spicy warm perfume, actual authentic spice that probably cost her a bunch of money no less.

“—you ladies are not cheap, are you, Mrs. Hamilton?” Lars asked her.

“Not at all, Mr. Lars,” she answered in a Pennsylvania Dutch accent. She set her elbow on the edge of the bar and leaned forward to show us her chest. She was an older lady who knew how to rock the hell out of it.

“I'm trying to make a bet with Joey here,” Lars explained.

“Oh? What'cha bettin' over?”

“If he sings to Cindy the next time she gives him a blowie. A certain amount of money says he won't do it, and so far, he's low balling me.”

“Oh, no, you don't wanna low ball Lars,” Mrs. Hamilton assured me.

“Obviously,” I agreed with a shrug.

“I was thinking more like a hundred bucks,” Lars told me.

“A hundred!” I gaped at him.

“Hey, if it happens, that means you make a hundred bucks from me,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, but what if it doesn't?”

“It'll happen, baby,” Mrs. Hamilton assured me with a nod of her head and a wink. “It'll happen. Trust me.”

“He also lives with corpses,” Lars added.

“Oh, come on, man!” I insisted.

“Ooh, nasty,” Mrs. Hamilton remarked with a wrinkle of her nose. “It'll definitely happen to you, baby. If you're living like that, it's gonna happen. So—my best advice is to take the bet.”

I sighed through my nose. “Okay, fine, I'll do it.”

“Excellent!” Lars turned to Mrs. Hamilton. “I shall be paying for this as well as whatever he wants, my dear Leela.”

“Ya always do, Mr. Lars,” she noted with a lopsided grin. And then her face turned serious. “Did—Did you tell him?”

“Tell me what?” I asked her.

“The fact I was cuckolded,” he filled in for me as he took out his wallet from his crushed velvet inner jacket pocket.

“Oh, yeah, you never answered my question 'bout that,” I pointed out.

“She—wound up dead shortly after I found out she cheated on me,” he replied.

“Oh. Oh, damn.”

He nodded his head.

“Yeah, pretty much my reaction, too. I have no idea as to how to feel about it, either. Hence, this—” He pointed at his own nonchalant face. “Needless to say, I am never going back to that. Anyways, what would you like? I shall pay for this, so—have whatever you want.”

****************************

After what happened to me, I needed my belly warmed up. I treated myself to a big cup of coffee and a plate of linguine, which I offered to share with Lars, but he didn't seem to be too keen on that. He was more keen on one of the strippers, Louise, or “Louie Louie” as he liked to call her. She was this short little thing with a short bob of black hair and fiery red lipstick, and wrapped in a velvet corset and some black sparkly fishnets. Mrs. Hamilton called her “their very own Bettie Page” because of how she looked and the fact she sidled right up to Lars and took her seat right there.

She offered to give me a lap dance but I was eating and drinking coffee, and I was already a step away from turning into Jelly Bellardini par in thanks to Cindy and Gwendolyn, so I had to turn her down. But she was kind enough to kiss me on the side of the neck and kiss me good enough to where I felt my pants tightening, so there's that.

It was dinner and a show, if I do say so myself.

Once I had finished and Lars' face was flushed from the feeling, and he paid for his drink and my food, I offered to take him back home with me to check out the dead chick in my kitchen. By that time, the lake effect started taking effect right then: I put my arm around Lars before we reached my apartment complex. He bowed his head to protect himself from those raw, cold winds.

I took out my key and unlocked the door for him. As soon as I opened the door, my coat sailed open and the winds hit the damp spot on my jeans. I also dropped my keys!

Lars ducked into the apartment and I stooped over to pick up my keys, and then I stood upright to close my coat. Once I got myself inside, I heard him gasp in shock.

“This is Maya Sorenson!” he decreed.

“Who?” I asked him as I shut the door closed with my hip. She still had her head laying on the table and I was sure one of the ghosts there came over to her to examine her. There was nothing obvious to point to that, but I felt it.

“Maya Sorenson! She's a rather well known writer in the United Kingdom—my wife and I knew her pretty well, too—what—what the fuck happened here, Joey?”

“I dunno. She was layin' in the gutter and I brought her home with me.”

He lunged for the sides of her head and lifted her up to check her face. Motionless. Lifeless.

He let her head fall back on top of the table, to which it landed with a _thud_. He fetched up a sigh and turned his attention to me. I noticed his body looked a bit fuller now that I could see him in brighter, more pure light. Maybe his separation and the death of his wife brought on the appetite from him, because I recalled the last time I saw him: he was trim, not as trim as me but definitely thin and fit. If he had a thick white beard on his face, he'd look like Hemingway.

“Well, we've gotta do something eventually, man,” he pointed out. “Rigor mortis is going to set in at some point if it hasn't already. And then she's going to start rotting and making a mess of your kitchen.”

I frowned as I peeled off my coat.

“Well, what do you think we should do?” I asked him as I hung up my coat on the hook next to the door. “I don't—really feel like goin' out again and on top of that, I think it might snow.”

He turned his head to me and I noticed a twinkle in those green eyes. And then I realized what he was thinking.

“Lars, we're not puttin' her outside,” I scoffed.

“You got a better idea?”

I opened my mouth but no sound came out. He got me there.

“Besides, the snow and the ice will preserve her flesh for a time,” he pointed out.

“For a time, anyways,” I said.

“Right. And in the morning, we shall take her to the hospital. But for now—she goes on the porch. Just so long as no one gives us any looks. Now—help me out here.”

“But wait. What about you, though?”

“What about me?” he asked me.

“Where're you gonna go? I mean, if you wanna crash on my couch, go right ahead. It's not very comfy, but it's something. It's either that or sleep head to toe with me in my bed.”

“I'll take the couch,” he assured me. “Now, help me out here…”


	4. #iwokeuplikethis

I rolled over onto my side right there in my comfy bed. All those soft blankets holding me and cradling me as though it were my mom holding me and cradling me. I nestled my head down in the heart of the pillow and a little tendril of a curl fell over my brow. It was a cold morning there in upstate New York, I could tell: the tip of my nose felt as though it had turned into ice, and the top of my head felt so cold—it didn't help matters that my hair was still wet from the rain and the shower. Or from the fact Mrs. Snow chased me into bed and threatened to spank my ass.

I still had no idea why she wanted to do that when I did absolutely nothing to deserve it. Sure, I may have… scratched, but I swore to her that it was just an itch and I wasn't going to be whipping my dick out. At least not with Lars there.

All those blankets around me made me not want to climb out of bed right then. I wanted to be there all damn day and not have a single care or worry in the world. After what happened to me, I deserve a place to rest my head and make me feel welcome. I still felt rather ravaged and even sore from my encounter with Cindy and Gwendolyn the night before: my hips ached a bit, even from laying on my side and cocking them up a bit. I pictured Cindy running her hand along my body in hopes to feel me: she was in fact cute for a stripper, a little too cute if I do say so myself.

I sighed through my nose and I was about to drift back off to sleep when something in the next room jarred me awake. I sat upright and noticed Vera looming there at the foot of my bed with her eyes as black as anything and as hollow as the bottom of Lake Ontario.

“Oh, hello, Vera,” I flatly greeted her, and she drifted out of sight. It was times like that I wished a ghost like Nerissa would show herself right then. At least something more than that creepy little girl staring at me while I'm sleeping.

I scrambled out of bed and headed out of the room to see what was the matter. Lars lay on his back down on the floor underneath the couch cushions, completely unfazed and still asleep. He snored a bit even while laying there, but I knew it wasn't that that woke me up.

I padded into the kitchen to find Vera again, that time scrounging through the garbage like there was anything to eat in there. She disappeared into thin air once she recognized me. I rolled my eyes at that and peered into the kitchen. Nothing there. A chill ran up my body and I brought my arms to my sides in hopes to keep myself warm. I needed to put on my pajamas just in case Mrs. Snow showed up again to slap me right in the ass with her frigid open hand.

Lars grunted and groaned behind me. I turned around in time to see him clambering to his feet and dusting himself off. He ran his fingers through his smooth hair and stared at me with a look of delirium on his round face.

“Joey, I have to go,” he announced, and then I remembered Maya was still outside. And I wondered if it had snowed at all.

“Oh, c'mon, man!” I exclaimed. “You can't leave me here with her!”

“I'm sorry, man,” he said in a broken voice. “I have to go back—” He hiccuped. I frowned at him.

“Have you been drinking?” I demanded.

“No—” he quipped in a tiny li'l voice. I sniffled in front of his voice. He was in fact telling the truth: I didn't smell alcohol on his breath. I did, however, smell something else. Something... kind of iron like in scent.

“Did you at least eat?” I asked him.

“I did, in fact.”

“What'd you have?”

“—steak.”

“When'd you have steak and why didn't you wake me up to offer me some?”

“Because—it was just a little bit. There was only one and it was large enough for a single person.”

I knitted my eyebrows together at that sentiment. But then I shrugged but it made sense to me. But then again, the whole place would've smelled of it so my best guess is that he went next door. It seemed legitimate.

Lars tugged his coat back on and he was about to head outside to the cold when there once again was that same noise that woke me up. He froze and stared at me with those green eyes big and wide with concern. I folded my arms over my bare chest because the cold was getting to be too much to bear for me.

“Put on a sweater, man, good God,” he griped. He flung open the door to reveal a thick blanket of snow covering the entirety of my front porch. And nothing else. Maya had gone. Not a drop of blood or anything on the floor before us.

“Oh, for fuck's sake,” I blurted out.

“SHIT!” he yelped with a clasp of his hands to the crown of his head. He turned to me with a fretful look upon his face.

“Well, you can't go now,” I told him as I felt my nipples tightening at the feeling of the bitter cold entering the apartment.

“I can't, no. Somebody may have taken her away from here.”

We stood there in silence with the door standing wide open. The goose pimples crossed over my arms and my chest and my stomach.

“I should probably put on a sweater,” I said to him as he closed the door before us.

“Yeah, you probably should.”


	5. in denial

“Okay, so where do you think she could've gone to?” I asked Lars. We had stepped outside of my place and into the bitter cold: I wrapped myself in my heavy winter coat and put on my gloves and my boots. I'm so thin that even I could never tolerate the cold here upstate.

I locked the door behind us and stuffed the keys into my jacket pocket, right next to my pocket knife, and turned to him as he adjusted the collar of his coat.

“I really couldn't even begin to say, Joey,” he confessed. “I mean—how do you even begin to tell someone 'yes, I am looking for a girl—she's dead!'”

“Well, I was thinkin' that since you knew 'er, you'd probably know if she had enemies and whatnot.” I led him to the wet sidewalk and away from the small piles of snow within the planters underneath the bottoms of the buildings.

“She was a writer, so I imagine she did in fact enemies. But what kind of enemies is beyond me. She wrote a zine.”

“A what?” I reached down my sleeve to adjust the flat metal bracelet on my right wrist from my sweatshirt sleeve.

“A zine. Called 'Water—something.'”

“Water the plants?” I asked with a smirk.

“No, no, no, no, nah. No, I don't remember what it's called right at the moment.”

“Well, I hope that wherever she is, we can find out more about her. I mean, I found her laying on the sidewalk after all.”

“She was a friend of mine, too,” he added.

“She was a friend of yours, too, right—” Lars set his hand on my chest which in turn stopped me right in the tracks.

“What?” I asked him. “What's the matter?”

He pointed across the parking lot; I noticed the frightened look upon his face. I followed his gaze to behold the sight of Maya herself tied upright on the back of someone's van. His head tilted forward and he bolted to the back of the car, albeit without looking both ways.

“Lars!” I called out, and my voice echoed over the sidewalk. I chased after him: it was tricky because of the ice on the pavement. He then skidded to a stop. It felt like I was skating along the pavement, except I wasn't wearing my skates. Lars fumbled about the raggedy yellow rope to try and release her from the back there. I lingered behind him with my knees bent a bit to steady myself. There was a bit of snow and ice on the threads of rope, so he struggled to undo the knots underneath her arms and legs. It almost felt like he was trying to break into a sarcophagus.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

I reached into my coat pocket for my pocket knife.

“Fuckly—fuck!”

“Here—” I offered. He took a step back from her so as to let me try and cut her down from it. The frozen rope proved to be a bit difficult given it was... well, frozen, but I managed to saw through a little part of it.

Albeit without cutting into my finger a bit. I jerked my hand back as though I had been burned.

“Cut yourself?” Lars asked me as he put his arms around her cold dead body to catch her before she landed on the cold ground.

“Yes!” I declared as I put the slit into my mouth to ease the pain a bit. “Ow—ow—ow—ow—”

Lars caught her but it was difficult given the ice on the ground all around us. I closed my knife and put it away, and I kept my one finger in my mouth to stop the bleeding, which meant I couldn't help him.

“Damn it,” he grunted. “—God damn it.”

I peered down at her feet, which looked as though they had been glued and then stitched together. I kept my injured finger in my mouth and I used my free hand to pick up her ankles. But I could only pick up her right foot from the ground, which meant her left dangled down to the pavement, which meant I had to walk at an angle to follow Lars' lead.

“Let's take her over here,” he suggested with a nod of his head.

“Where here?” I asked him.

“This closet here—”

“That's where the water softener is!” I proclaimed.

“It'll warm up her body,” he pointed out as he trudged backwards to the closet door. The snow crunched underneath the soles of his boots and I worried about him slipping and falling, and also someone in the upstairs apartments watching us. I peered over my shoulder to ensure we were alone.

“Stop, stop, stop,” I urged him.

“What?” He halted in place and I took a quick glimpse at my finger. It was a little nick in my finger, but it hurt like hell, but at least it wasn't bleeding all over the place. I crouched down to pick up her other foot.

“Okay, go ahead,” I told him, and he continued to back up towards the closet.

“God,” he grunted.

“I know,” I agreed with him. “Light as a feather—stiff as a board—”

He stopped right before the light blue grated door.

“Want me to get that?” I volunteered.

“Yes, and make it quick—I hear somebody coming,” he informed me. I set down her feet on the snow and I felt a little shock on my right wrist, right along the metal bracelet on my wrist.

“Ow!”

“What?” He raised his eyebrows at me.

“She shocked me!”

I shook my hand about a bit and then I threw open the door, and we came face to face with the water softener, that little white cylinder with tubes heading up to the ceiling of the closet.

“Quickly, quickly—” Lars quipped as he dragged her into the closet; footsteps crunching on the snow nearby caught my ear.

“Just lay 'er down!” I said in a hushed voice. I turned my head to the stretch of sidewalk on my left. “Fuck it.”

Lars pressed himself against the wall and held her up to the water softener. I joined him in there and closed the door behind me.

We were met with darkness save for the little bit of light from the slits in the door to my left. An inch of clearance separated Lars' full waist from my pelvic area, and about another inch away from me was the water softener plus the corpse of Maya. I peeked through the slits in the door to find an elderly person walking past us. I held still even though we were out of sight and out of reach and I had absolutely no choice but to hold still, either. Lars didn't move, either.

The footsteps strode away from us. Within a minute, we were left with total silence.

“Okay,” he breathed out.

“Okay what?” I asked him.

“I say we leave her here for now,” he suggested to me in a soft voice.

“Yeah, and risk someone finding her here. Then again, having her on my porch was risky as all hell, though...”

“At least here, she's out of sight,” he pointed out.

“Exactly!”

“And it's a little too risky to drive her to hospital, if I'm honest,” he added.

“How's that risky, though?”

“How are we going to explain it?”

“We found this girl and she's dead. We dunno how it happened.”

“It's still nuts because we'd have to drive around with a dead body in the back of your car.”

“Like this isn't nuts?!” I gestured to the corpse of Maya right next to us.

He fetched up a sigh and lunged for the door handle, but I beat him to it. I ducked out of the closet first and then he followed. Maya still remained right there next to the water softener even though Lars very easily could've lay her down on the floor next to us, right in front of the cylinder.

“Maybe we should take her to hospital,” he suggested in a soft voice.

“Well, make the decision quick, Lars, because I hear someone else—”

Before he could close the door or do anything else, Maya slid along the wall and towards us. She landed on the ground with a hard _thud_. Light as a feather, stiff as a board.

“—coming.”

Before either of us could get a word in, the old lady who walked past us returned to us. She was rummaging through her big wicker purse for something or other and she halted right in front of us, and the corpse of Maya laying there on the sidewalk and the ajar closet door before us.

“She—passed out,” Lars explained.

“Well, what was she doing in there?” she asked us in a squeaky voice.

“We dunno,” I filled in with a shrug.

“We were just gonna take her to hospital,” Lars quipped.

“Yeah—I also kinda—cut my finger a little bit,” I followed as I cradled my left hand in my other hand: my right wrist still ached from where she shocked me a bit.

“Well, you boys be careful, okay?” she advised us. “She doesn't look too good.”

She walked past us and fished out her keys from her hand bag. We watched her continue onward to her car at the far end of the parking lot before I turned to Lars.

“We ought to take her to hospital,” he suggested. “Put her into good hands.”

“Yeah, and do somethin' 'bout my finger, too,” I said as I held up my somewhat injured hand to him.


	6. give me reason

My finger was aching me, even from that little cut there from my pocket knife. It wasn't much of a slit, just a little nick in my skin, but the cold didn't help matters. It also didn't help matters that I helped Lars lug a dead body into the back seat of my car and I had to make use of both of my hands. She felt a bit heavier than usual, heavier from when we carried her across that small strip of blacktop to that closet. It almost felt as though she had been loaded down with a bunch of water even whilst standing there in hiding next to the water softener. I was given a bit of slack from Lars when he fetched some old newspapers so as to cover her up. I didn't really see the point because we were to stick to the story that we found a girl laying on the pavement and we had no idea how she died or what killed her.

I shook my hand about when we reached the first stoplight, albeit the one across the street from the hockey rink. I supposed I was going to find myself there more and more these days, unless I could find a way to do my own thing, my own adventure into rock n' roll. I was the only guy in Anthrax who paid any dues, after all, even standing on my own in the lower part of upstate to do some touring with Megaforce and then with Bible Black, the band I was in prior to Anthrax: I knew how to seek out for help and at the same time, do my own thing, even if it meant doing it for someone else for a little while. There came a point in between my tenure as a sorta semi-pro hockey player and a pro musician wherein I took a good long look at myself, in the mirror no less, and I sighed through my nose and hitched up my boot straps.

I was willing to keep my mind open and my fingertips out before me. Music made me climb out of bed in the morning and it brought me the most joy: I often played hockey because it was my other love, but it didn't have the same effect on me. I knew it was the same story with Lars: he found more joy in making music than he did with playing tennis. I could see it in those first times Scott and Frankie whisked me backstage to see them play live.

I had no idea what thrash metal was and I couldn't even say what any of the bands were if someone asked me. And yet, even as I stood there right next to Scott, and over the deafening roar of the music, I could tell what they all meant by the word “thrash.” Metallica went forth and thrashed with this almost violent kind of tone to their music, and yet it was enthralling to witness first hand. James had this deep snarl to his voice; Kirk, I could tell was a natural at the guitar; Cliff towered over us all and he translated that over into his bass playing; and then there was little Lars, the little bearded heavy Danish man in the front seat right next to me, pounding away on the drums as though his life depended on it. There was a moment in which I saw myself wailing away on the drums before that crowd.

Oh, fuck, that crowd! I wished Bible Black had that energetic and enthusiastic of a crowd when we were playing up around Plattsburgh, near the Canadian border.

I still recalled Scott glancing up at me with this big goofy grin on his face and those thick eyebrows posed right before my face like a pair of black caterpillars. I couldn't help but smile with him. It was there on the brim of the backstage area, standing about ten feet away from Lars, that I developed a close bond with Scott, and also Frankie, whose face lit up when he told me about Cliff.

And then, there I was, sitting next to Lars on the way to the hospital with a dead girl in my back seat, and wondering what the absolute fuck did I do to be swept under the rug with such haste and without any vein of remorse to speak of. I thought for sure I had made friends with them.

It almost made me feel sick to my stomach to think about, and it was a miracle I was even able to fall asleep last night, even with Mrs. Snow and Vera outside of my door.

And yet, here was Lars to my right. He had been let go by guys whom he believed were friends.

I always thought he remained above me given his hailing from a much more well-to-do family as they were able to relocate from all the way from Denmark to sunny southern California on a whim, at least that was according to Frankie. Where I was the guy who played drums part time and focused more on singing, he seemed to have a better grip on the kit on his end. At least that was what it felt like to me.

The light turned green and we rolled forward down the pavement. I wondered if Lars would be willing to share a bit more about his past with playing tennis. I wondered if he and I had more in common than I had originally believed. I knew he had questions even as we drove past the hockey rink, that big glossy looking outdoor horseshoe shape of a thing in the middle of the trees to our left. I thought about introducing him to some old hockey buddies of mine if and when he felt up for it.

But then again, I was the hick from the sticks here in upstate New York while he was the immigrant boy with an accent that made my intelligence points fall off of a cliff. Even as we approached the hospital, I began to reconsider that very fact. Maybe we didn't have much in common, or maybe I was overthinking the hell out of this because I had a dead girl laying right behind me in the backseat underneath a thin little layer of newspapers.

We rode down this boulevard in the heart of 'Swaygo towards the hospital and every so often, I peered up into the rear view mirror at the body behind us. I started to wonder about her, like what was her full story. I found her laying dead on the sidewalk and Lars knew her. How did she die and also what more did Lars know about her, that is if he did.

It almost broke my heart to see her laying back there. Almost, anyway—she was an unknown to me so I could only give the bare minimum in terms of grief for her, but that was about it. Seeing as I had nothing but time, I needed to seek out an answer for her. I needed more than one answer.

I needed a drink. And by drink, I mean a cup of coffee. I needed a cup of coffee once I got my finger fixed up. Speaking of which, it was quite the task to be driving with one hand and only two fingers, and every so often my right knee. In fact we almost went off the road because it ached me so much, but Lars was quick to catch the steering wheel for me for a second.

But we reached the hospital and the only the thing I could think of was getting her out of my backseat and under the microscope of a coroner. It was bad enough I lived with a few ghosts and one of them wanted to cut off my hands at the wrist if I even so much as tugged on the hose. The whole prospect of having a corpse behind me made my skin crawl.

We pulled into the driveway, and into that part before the front doors to the emergency room. A young dark haired nurse in blue scrubs came rushing out for us; she greeted Lars once he had opened the door.

“We found this girl—she's in the backseat, we don't know what she died from,” he told her in a such quick clip that it took me a few seconds to realize what he had said to her.

“Okay, okay—are you guys alright, though?” she asked us with haste.

“I circumcised my finger!” I declared.

“Okay, come on in! We'll take care of you,” she assured me. I switched off the car so she could help us into the emergency room; two more nurses took to the backseat to get Maya out of there. She swept us into this overly clean little room with light blue walls and one of those flat beds with tissue paper on one side so as to check on me. Lars posted up by the door and took a peek out to the almost deserted hallway every so often.

“Just a little nick,” the nurse assured me, “although you did get cut down pretty deep, so—I'll just put a little alcohol on it.”

Even though she was gentle with the cotton ball, it burned so bad I had to close my eyes. But she managed to clean the wound and put a bandage on it for me. I was half expecting her to put some gauze on it, but I guessed it wasn't as bad as I believed. It could've been from the adrenaline and the fact there was a corpse in my backseat.

“I think you'll live,” she said with a beaming smile on her face.

“Thank you,” I told her as I felt my face grow warm.

Lars let out this big hairy belch that I felt even from across the room. I set a hand on my belly to feel for him.

“Oh, my word,” she remarked.

“Definitely,” he added as a male nurse skidded into the doorway.

“Come quick—” he quipped to her.

“What's wrong?” she asked as she darted out of the room, which in turn left me and Lars alone in there. I held my hand to my chest and winced a bit. I had no idea if it was from the alcohol or the fact I was alone there in the hospital with Lars, but something about this little wound hurt even more. Maybe it was my relaying back on my memories with Anthrax on the way there… Either way, Lars himself took notice and he padded over to me and took a seat next to me.

I bowed my head and he scooted closer to me. I didn't want to say it and I knew if I did, I would start crying.

“You know...” he began in a soft voice, but he never said anything more following that. The room was silent save for the nurses chattering down the hall and some machines across the way from us. He smacked his lips and turned his head towards me again.

“If it makes you feel any better, I didn't take Cliff's death very well,” he confessed.

“How's that supposed to make feel better?” I frowned at him.

“Because I hope it can be some kind of comfort,” he pointed out in a soft voice. “I feel like—if—we—you and I can relate through pain, it can be the start of something between us. It can be the start of something—genuine.”

I turned my head to face him and the tender look upon his face. I stared into those green eyes that made me think of winter time, especially in those dark nights during that fateful tour with Metallica themselves.

I toured with him. And just the night before, I let him spend the night with me. I figured I might as well let things lax a bit so he could see more of me.

“Okay,” I said in a near whisper. “Why didn't you take his death too well?”

“I would've moved mountains for him,” he explained, “right before Cliff was killed, I had just begun patching things with him again. We had been drifting apart for a few weeks prior to then.”

I raised an eyebrow at that.

“You have?” I asked him. “You guys seemed so close to one another.”

“That was what I thought,” he confessed. “But in those few nights before we were headed off to Scandinavia, I decided to go forth with him. I decided to rekindle things between us while we looked forward to heading on back to my home—you know, to show off my childhood to James and Kirk and also to see my old friends again. But it was those couple of nights prior when I sat down next to Cliff after dinner—those are the ones that—in hindsight anyway—” I noticed the tears brimming his eyes. “—made me realize how ephemeral and delicate life itself is. I mean—just looking at you, I—I can't help but feel like we both got fucked over.”

“We pretty much did,” I assured him, and I couldn't help the grin on my face. “We both got fucked in the ass and then left out like my finger.”

“So—no choice but to be friendly with each other,” he smiled back at me. “What hurts most is it was almost as if James and Kirk didn't want to process it whereas I was more than willing to do it. It was as if I wasn't allowed.”

“What kinda fuckstick would allow such a great amounta fuckery 'round there,” I joked, to which he let out this big bold belly laugh.

I couldn't help but laugh with him, and that was when those cold fluorescent lights above us dimmed for a moment and then brightened, and then dimmed again. Lars peered up to the ceiling for a look himself.

“What—What the fuck?” I muttered to myself.

The nurses down the hall chattered some more and I heard metal scraping on the floor.

“Oh my God,” I heard one of them say. Lars looked back at me and I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Let's go check it out,” he suggested, still in that soft voice.


	7. dead poet

I led Lars down the hall to figure out what was going on. Keeping my wounded finger tucked in my one pocket helped ease the sting of the alcohol a bit. I swore it was worse of a wound than it already was, but I supposed not. Since there was no one else in there save for a couple of other nurses and a man in a wheelchair, we were able to move about quickly. The smell of what I think was grease made me wrinkle my nose a bit. The nurse who bandaged me up caught my attention from there in the doorway with the worried look upon her face. She held what looked like a PVC pipe in one hand.

“Which of you found her first?” she asked us with a raise of her eyebrow, and I raised my hand up next to my head. She gestured for me to come closer and I wondered what she would do with that piece of pipe. But she guided me into the next room where I was met with some more of that greasy smell as well as the very sight of gears, nuts and bolts, and even more pieces of that white pipe strewn about a flat bed, whereby she or someone else had lay another sheet of plastic atop the surface. Maya's head lay on the head of the bed, just her head. Like someone had beheaded her and then set it down right there right before me. The serene look on her face didn't help matters, either.

I stopped right in place and gaped at the sight of her head.

“What,” I breathed out.

“Yeah, that was—our reaction, too,” the nurse explained to me.

“Her head just came clean off,” the male nurse told me. “Like it was a doll's head.”

“She—” I stopped so I could better process what I was hearing. “What?”

“Do you know her name at all?” the lady nurse asked me.

“Maya—something,” I replied.

“Maya Sorenson,” Lars said from behind me there in the doorway.

“She's a writer,” I added. “I only know that much.”

“I kind of knew her,” Lars continued. “She was from England, born to Norwegian parents.”

I shifted around to face him straight on. I swore he said he and his wife were friends with her. Unless he was stretching the truth a bit, then I could understand. But I heard him with my own two ears about it.

I turned back around in time to find the male nurse shuffling through a few folders in a drawer on the other side of the room. He held up one of those pale yellow folders and fished out a little piece of paper.

“Oof—” Lars murmured behind me. I turned around again to find him sidling away from there and into the hallway.

“Here, man,” the male nurse stated; I turned my head again to take the piece of paper from him.

“What's this?” I asked him.

“I thought that name sounded familiar,” he confessed to me. “Her older sister came in here from New York City about a week ago—she passed away last night. But her parents live down in the Bronx if there's any chance you'd like to come in touch with them.”

“Mind me asking what her sister died from?”

“Heart failure,” the lady nurse replied. “We're still trying to figure out the cause behind it, though. Candace came in here from Syracuse with a complaint of a sharp pain inside her chest, and she checked out all the symptoms for heart failure.”

“And she died last night,” I concluded.

“Rather peacefully, too,” she added.

“Shit,” I muttered under my breath. I stared on at the bits and pieces laying strewn about the top of that bed. I had questions then.

I thanked the nurses and stepped back out to the hallway. Lars stifled another belch and I could only wonder why. He dropped his hand to his chest and then to his stomach.

“So they don't really have much of a background on her other than the obvious sentiment,” he muttered aloud.

“Exactly,” I replied once we were out of earshot.

“So—what do you think we should do?” he asked me as he pressed his hands to his hips.

“Well—the nurse I spoke to back there said she has family livin' down in the City—New York City. In the Bronx, I think is what he said.”

“So—you reckon maybe they can help us out here?”

“It's worth a shot. It's gonna be a while before I'm picking myself off of the floor to make my own music and—you know, call it all my own. I'm sure you know the whole waiting game with studio time and composing songs and stuff and whatnot.”

“Oh, absolutely. And same here, too. If the both of us are going to be on our own, we might as well do our own thing for the time being. But I just can't help but feel strange about it, though.”

“Why?” I knitted my eyebrows at him.

“What,” he began, “you are expecting them to be just okay with hearing about one of their own having dropped dead and crumbled into a million little pieces like the innards of a Volkswagen?”

I shook my head. “No, but they gotta know it, though, Lars. They just do.”

“So I presume that little piece of paper there is referring back to them?” he asked me. I read the front of it and I spotted a bunch of black scrawl, but I could tell what it was saying.

“Yeah. The question now is how are we gonna get to New York City on such quick notice.”

“We can't take your car?” he asked me with a baffled look on his face.

“I've always hitched a ride to New York City—I ain't drivin' that ramshackle thing down there, especially with the lake effect coming our way again. I feel it in my bones.” I tucked the piece of paper into my coat pocket when I felt another little static shock on my metal bracelet. I jerked my hand back and rolled down my sleeve to check on it.

That explained that. Carrying Maya must have stirred something more than a little static shock. But then I had a question about that. I knew static lasted for a little bit before it went away, but this lingered even more. This welled up whenever I even so much as shifted my wrist on the inside of my sleeve.

“You okay?” Lars asked me.

“Yeah,” I promised to him, and then I frowned at him. “By the way, the innards of a Volkswagen, what the fuck?”

“It's—” he began.

“It's?” I raised my eyebrows at him.

“It's, uh—it's a long story.”

I fetched up a sigh and the two of us headed out of the hospital and back to my car, still posted up there at the curb outside. I shook my wrist again. No shock that time.

We climbed back into the car and I wondered who could drive us all the way down to the Bronx neighborhood of New York City on a day like this. It was almost a four hour drive from there in Oswego and down to the City on a good day, but I knew we wouldn't be riding in a van like all the times I went down there for Anthrax.

I thought about Mrs. Hamilton back at Black Orchid and how kind she was to the both of us. I figured that since she was the boss lady there that maybe she could take a little time off. I was sure it would be just for that day.

“Says here Maya was a poet and a musician,” Lars piped up at one point, and by one point, I mean prior to the block where Black Orchid was at. We rolled to a stop at the light.

“How'd you—” I turned my head only to find he had reached into my jacket pocket for the piece of paper. I didn't even feel him reach into there for it.

“A poet and a musician as well as a writer,” he continued with a solemn look over at me. “I had no idea. I wonder if she recorded anything. I would love to hear it…” His voice trailed off.

“Dude, how'd you do that?” I demanded.

“Do what?”

“Reach into my pocket. It was underneath the seat belt.”

“Joey, I am sure you know a few tricks whilst being a drummer.”

“Maybe to be a bit of an ass kicker and a work horse but nothing of that level, though.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Yeah, why—why the fuck would I wanna do that?”

“You never know, my Iroquois friend.” He knitted his eyebrows together. “You are Iroquois, right?”

“Yeah, on my mom's side. My dad on the other hand, is Italian.”

“I should'a figured by a name like Belladonna that you are in fact Italian.”

“Bellardini,” I corrected him. “But then again—if your name was three miles long like it is mine, you'd go by kind of a stage name, too.”

The light turned green and we rolled forward and to the parking lot of Black Orchid. The lake effect was upon us, even by the sight of the dark clouds blanketing the sky above us. I hoped Mrs. Hamilton could drive us down there and I hoped the roads would be good enough for the three of us. I switched off the car and Lars and I stepped into the joint, the entrance of which still smelled of jager and sweat, and where we were in fact faced on by Mrs. Hamilton herself, wrapped in a thin black rain coat and with dainty lace gloves on her hands. She smelled of a faint scent of cologne and some sweet soap, and her bob of hair glistened a bit as if she had taken a shower.

She grinned at the both of us. Her skin was perky, rosy, and soft looking.

“Hello, boys,” she greeted us, and albeit with a twinkle in her eye. “I was just clockin' out for the day—I had a long night—but you both look like you wanna tell me something.”

She showed me such a warm smile that it made my toes curl inside of my boots.

She had a long night: it was a fat chance but if I had to feed fudge to satisfy it, alright then.


	8. magnolia blvd.

“Thank you so much, Mrs. Hamilton,” I said to her as I shifted my weight in the seat underneath me. “I was worried we might be imposing.”

“Oh, baby, you aren't imposing at all,” she assured me as she flashed me a little smile away from her view of the road before us. “Not a couple of handsome fellas like the two of you, no way.”

I blushed when she said that. I had never been referred to as handsome before, nor have I really seen myself as even remotely along the lines of handsome. She showed me another glimpse, that time with her eyes fixed on the crown of curls atop my head. I wondered what she was thinking as we crawled over that daunting stretch of forest that's upstate New York. I thought back to the day before I joined Anthrax and I took a plane from all the way up in Plattsburgh down to Ithaca: the first time I ever flew on a plane, too. I still couldn't shake the feeling of the take off every now and again. And it was driving on that little two lane road that made me wish for a plane again.

It didn't help matters that the seat underneath me was about the size of a dinner plate and the upholstery eroded away to its bare minimum: I had to sit slouched down in it with my knees risen up and with my arms tucked into my body to keep myself warm and comfortable.

Lars meanwhile had taken to the back seat, which was no better if I'm honest. I heard him shifting his weight more so than me back there. Mrs. Hamilton on the other hand, wrestled with the car against those high lake effect winds. She had this little radar detector strapped to the dashboard, right underneath the windshield and right behind the steering wheel; as far as I knew, it didn't work. Her words, not mine.

“Why not get a new one?” asked Lars.

“It's far as I know,” she confessed.

The heater on the other hand, only sort of worked, which meant the three of us had to zip up all the way: the tip of my nose felt as cold as ice even just by sitting there in the seat and doing nothing. My ears felt cold, too, even with my hair strewn over them like dog's ears.

All the trees stretched up to the sky like a bunch of people in a crowd. All of a sudden, I missed performing. That energy, that power, seeing everybody having a good time and feeling myself exposed and out in the open to immerse myself in the whole thing. Music is my life and my one true love. I needed to get back into it before too long otherwise I could foresee myself losing it.

I even pointed that out to Mrs. Hamilton.

“I hope you can, baby,” she said. “It sounds like it's what makes you come alive.”

“It is. I was absolutely devastated when Charlie called me yesterday and told me I was out. He even sounded broken when he said it to me, like he didn't want to say that to me. He didn't want to break it to me and he didn't want to let me go. I think—I think, anyways—he actually a little bit of a break in his voice when he broke it to me.”

“Charlie sounds like a man of prudence and good nature,” she declared in a soft voice.

“He really is,” Lars chimed in. “One of the best drummers on planet Earth right now, too.”

“He is, for sure. He was the first one to get friendly with me when I first joined Anthrax. He almost felt like the kid brother I never had—him and Frankie.”

“And Scott?”

“I thought, anyways,” I said with a shrug. “I dunno what his deal is at the moment. The last time I spoke to him he was—kind of harsh on me, like 'what did I do to you, man? I thought we were friends.' Like that, you know?”

“Oh, yeah.”

We fell back into silence until we reached Binghampton and I swore I saw Mrs. Snow out there on the railing of the bridge we crossed over. Wrapped in those pearly white tatters, complete with a faint impression of a red cross, and all staring back at me with this hard look on her face as if she wanted to cut off my hands at the wrist.

And then I remembered I barely ate breakfast that morning. I think she noticed me setting a hand on my stomach,

“You boys gettin' hungry?” she asked us just before Monticello.

“It's gettin' kinda late, though, Mrs. Hamilton,” I pointed out as I thought about this long drive and the fact she had had a long night.

“There's always hunting outside,” she teased me.

“We should slaughter and stuff a pig,” I suggested.

“Oink,” Lars blurted out, which in turn made her laugh.

We rolled through Monticello and within time the outskirts of the City entered our view. Nostalgia just bitch slapped me right in the face. I had no idea how much I had missed New York City until I spotted the Twin Towers and the Empire State Building all rising up through the gray late morning mist.

I pictured myself performing at that little place, L'Amours, with an act of my own. Maybe singing and drumming at the same time. Maybe just singing. Maybe just drumming? Who knows and I had a feeling it was going to be a little bit before anything like that happened.

I knitted my knees together to better keep the insides of my thighs warm.

I had no idea why I felt so nervous, but I did. That fluttery feeling and that pit in my stomach, like something bad was about to happen when we reached the Bronx.

I shifted my weight again as the road switched from highway to freeway. Every so often, Mrs. Hamilton took another glimpse over at me. I met eyes with her at one point and I knew it: she was looking at my hair, but why, though?

I was wearing this big comfy coat against the wind and yet I still found myself shaking like a leaf. I put my collar up against the bottom of my face and then I stuffed my hands into my pockets. The heater sucked and the towering buildings around us weren't helping matters, either. I swore it would snow by the time we reached side streets making up the Bronx.

“Alright, which way, Joey?” she asked me as we pulled up to the first stoplight. I reached into my pocket for the piece of paper and handed it to her. She took it and read over the nurse's scrawl. She nodded her head and cleared her throat.

“Okay. I think I know where that is.” The light turned green; we were the only ones on the street. My stomach began to ache from hunger; Lars meanwhile fell into complete silence behind us. I couldn't look behind me because that meant exposing my neck to tepid air and I didn't want that.

Mrs. Hamilton peered into the rear view mirror for him.

“Looks like we've dozed off back here,” she pointed out.

“Oh, yeah?” I asked her.

“Yeah. He's been awful quiet since we left Monticello.” She cleared her throat and took another glimpse over at me.

“You're not just handsome—you're really, really cute,” she remarked. “The curls on top of your head are just—they're adorable.”

“It's my crown,” I said with a smirk on my face. “'Cause I'm king of the castle.”

“You ever think of coming home with a girl like Cindy?”

“I've thought of it but I never really took it with a bitta seriousness. You know, being a serious touring and professional musician and whatnot.”

“Oh, you young Italian Stallions,” she chuckled. “You never know what you want until you've got your cocks out for a lady. I saw you with Cindy and Gwen last night, baby—you've got quite the look for the former. She is my daughter after all.”

“That's right—you're her mom.”

“Mr. Ridgeway—my ex—was a black man, hence Gwen. He was a good man, though. Things just weren't for us.”

“Is there a, uh—Mr. Hamilton in your life at all?” I asked her, albeit with a clearing of my throat.

“Kind of, you know, in a way. Mr. Hamilton has passed on.”

“Oh. Ohhhhh, shit.”

“It's okay, babe. He was living on borrowed time anyways. Before he went, he told me the best thing for me to do is to keep Black Orchid alive. But, yes—he's still alive to me in my heart.”

She showed me a little smile as we came to another red light. I swallowed at the sight of the twinkle in her eye.

But lucky for me, we reached the apartment building in time, right there in the heart of the Bronx, and right when the freezing rain started to come down on us. I woke up Lars by patting the sides of his face and then helping out onto the wet pavement. All I cared about was getting the hell out of that cold car. Mrs. Hamilton led us to the front step of the building and then into the warm and dry lobby. The first time I felt warm in almost four whole hours.

I let down the collar of my coat and ran my fingers through my black curls. I was about to say something to Lars when Mrs. Hamilton led us to the elevator doors.

Those heavy silvery doors slid open for us and we crowded inside there. I pushed the button and they ground closed before us.

“So do we know if the door's even locked?” asked Lars in a broken voice.

“What, the front door?” Mrs. Hamilton rustled her coat.

“Yes. If she has family here, surely we would have to think of how we are going to explain this whole thing. Surely they would have to know that their daughters—nieces—wives—girlfriends, whomever, have died.” He hiccuped and put a hand over his mouth.

“And if they don't, someone's gonna haveta break it to 'em, Lars,” I pointed out as I held onto the metal bar behind me with both hands.

“Well, yeah, but—”

“But what?”

He didn't answer. The doors slid open for us again and we filed out of there and into the hallway. Mrs. Hamilton led us down the hall to the apartment in question, where the door had been left ajar. She was the first to poke her head inside of the dark front room.

“Hello?” she called as she stepped inside there. I followed her in, and then Lars rounded out the trio.

“Anyone home?” she called again.

I peered about the dark room: it was like a storm hit. Everything was disheveled and strewn about the floor before us, and I mean everything: newspapers, couch pillows, trash, the actual trash can, the coffee table which had been tipped over, a lampshade, and a bunch of pencils. I was about to turn to the right when someone behind me cleared their throat. It wasn't Lars given it sounded too feminine.

I turned around to see this petite woman with a bob of platinum blonde hair and dressed in a bright red blazer and a matching skirt right behind us there in the doorway. Lars almost backed up into me.

“Can—I help you three?” she asked us with a bit of reluctance; she had that unmistakable Queens accent that made me think of Scott.

“I think we should ask you the same thing,” I retorted back to her.

“I'm Angeline Belotti with the _New York Times_ ,” she said. “I'm here investigating the murder of writer Maya Sorenson and her half sister Candace.”


	9. the deathsurround

“Now, may I ask again—what are the three of you doing here?”

Angeline folded her arms at me in particular. The fact she looked at me with such a deep and intense glare right in the eye sent a chill down my spine. I swallowed at the sight of her. It was that smart wardrobe of hers and the fact she smelled like roses and fresh coffee, something I could pick up even from clear across the room given how pungent it was right before my face. And it was the fact I had become a down on my luck loser almost overnight that made me inferior to her.

“I—found Maya laying on the sidewalk and I took her to the hospital,” I explained to her; it was in fact the truth, just minus the part I took her home with me and there was a corpse in my kitchen for the whole night and most of the day. And minus the part I had her in the back seat of my car and before then, Lars and I were trapped in a closet with her.

“Okay—I'll take it,” she said to me with a squinting of her eyes. She turned her to attention to Lars and Mrs. Hamilton, both of whom scattered right behind me to the rest of the apartment. “And what about them?”

“Who, these two?” I gestured behind me.

“Yes.”

“They're helping me.”

“You're a big boy, I'm sure you could do it yourself.”

“With my current state o' mind, I don't think so.”

“Your current state of mind?” She eyed me with a bit of suspicion. I had a feeling she didn't recognize me, just from how she looked at me at first. It happened to me once before when I was with Anthrax: we were playing about a couple of blocks away from Yankee Stadium and I met some people outside the front there, and they all thought I was just another fan waiting in line, even though I stood off to the side there. It was the exact same case here with Angeline. I swallowed and decided not to answer.

She nibbled on her bottom lip and I wondered what she was going to do right then. The sound of rummaging over in the kitchen caught my ear.

“This drawer's full of wires,” Mrs. Hamilton quipped. “Just full of wires. No explanation. Just wires.” I turned my head to find her standing in the kitchen, right next to the drawer within my line of sight and right next to what I believed to be the oven.

“Like, spare wires?” I asked her with a knitting of my eyebrows.

“I guess? They're not connected to anything in here.”

I held up a finger to Angeline for her to wait a minute there in the front foyer. I padded into the kitchen and I hung there in the doorway as Mrs. Hamilton took out a handful of pearly white wires for me to see. I turned my head to the sight of cold metal up against the wall, right in place of where the coffee maker should've been right there next to the fridge. I just realized I not only didn't have breakfast that morning, I didn't have my cup of coffee, either. The cupboards looked as though they had been loaded down with even metal things: the one right next to my head had something inside of it that resembled to one of Scott's old speaker cabinets, sans the camoflauge print on the front and in its place looking as though it was about to slide right out and onto the floor.

Mrs. Hamilton came over to me to show the wires. They all looked like they had been snipped right out of the wall next to me. On the counter next to us was a bunch of wrenches, a bunch of tools and shit, strewn about the tiles there. I thought Maya's family lived here?

“I found these in one drawer and I found a bunch of nuts and bolts in the drawer next to it,” Mrs. Hamilton continued as she returned to the drawer to put them back in there. “There's another drawer with something that looks like it came right out of one of those computers you'd see at a tech store.”

“Oh, those things that are all big and blocky and look like they could be used for masonry?” Lars called from the next room over.

“Yeah. This whole kitchen is just full of tech stuff.”

“Back up, back up, back up,” I stopped right in my tracks. “You tellin' me this is supposed to be a family home and they've got all this hardware bullshit here takin' up everything?”

“I'm not telling anything, but rather showing you,” Mrs. Hamilton teased me. “But that's the case, though.”

“I think I'm just going by what I know from family homes,” I explained, “—you know, from my parents and my grandparents' houses.”

“Well, this isn't your parents or your grandparents' houses, now, aren't they?” Angeline sneered. “But I do see your logic, though...”

I stepped out of the way for her to enter the kitchen. Even though the sole light we had was from the tiny window on the right, I knew it was enough for her to take a good long look at me and my funky looking face.

“Joey Belladonna, right?” she asked me.

“Yes,” I said with a huff of breath.

“I thought I recognized you from somewhere,” she confessed as she wagged a finger at me. “You're that little upstate boy whom Anthrax kicked to the curb just a mere day ago.”

“Hey, you said it yourself: I ain't little.” I patted my stomach and that brought a laugh out of her. I broke through the ice, yes! But then I shrugged at her. “Yeah, apparently. I don't know what the deal was there.”

She gestured for me to come closer even though Mrs. Hamilton had gone into the next room with Lars, thus we were out of earshot.

“I was speaking to Frank—bassist Frank Bello, you know over the phone just this morning,” she said in a low voice, “—and he said he didn't want you to leave.”

“I don't think Charlie did, either,” I pointed out; my heart sank at the sound of Frankie not wanting me to go, probably more at the break in Charlie's voice when he broke it to me, “but that's just me, though.”

“Apparently guitarist Danny didn't want it to happen, either,” she added. “But they've already got a new guy in—John—John—Leaf, I think was his name? I wrote it down but I have to confess that it's on the tip of my tongue.”

“It happens,” I said with another shrug. Lars stumbled into the room right then with a flustered look on his face and holding what looked like a coffee mug in hand. Angeline gestured to him.

“Lars—Ulrich is it?”

“Yes!” he answered with a twinkle in his eye and a grin on his face.

“No word on Metallica's replacement for you?”

To which he shook his head in response to. Even in the dim light, I could make out the sight of a wounded look upon his face at the sound of that question. She seemed a little intrusive about this sort of thing and I wondered if she ever got into trouble with this blunt, brusque attitude of hers, but then again, she was a reporter. They make their living digging down and asking the raw questions, even if it makes those being questioned close their eyes and want to sink into the floor and die. In a way, it kind of is like being a musician, or an artist for that matter, given you can't really let things get under your skin and you can't be afraid to offend some people along the way.

“I am wondering what exactly happened to Candace because it seems like every memory of her was wiped clean from this place,” he said in a single breath. “Mrs. Hamilton and I have yet to find anything that says she lived here.”

“Is that her bedroom?” Angeline asked him.

“It's _a_ bedroom,” Mrs. Hamilton called out.

“Yeah, it's _a_ bedroom,” Lars added. “But there's no sign pointing it to belonging to either Candace or Maya for that matter.”

“Maybe there's another room over this way?” Angeline gestured out the kitchen door.

“I looked over there,” Lars assured her. “There's a bathroom and the master bedroom, and a closet—and that's about it. It's like they wanted Candace and Maya to be buried alive.”

“You'll just have to dig with your hands then,” she said in kind of a lofty way.

“My dear Angeline,” Lars started, “—there are a lot of things I would do, but digging a hole out there—up in the heart of Syracuse where gorgeous Joe here is from, in order to exhume a corpse isn't one of them.”

“Lars?” Mrs. Hamilton called out from the room behind him.

“Yes!”

She entered the room with a book in hand.

“I found this underneath the remnants of the dresser in there.”

“What is it?” I asked her with a tucking of my hands into my coat pockets.

“Looks like a journal of some sort,” she answered. “If it is, I don't want to impose on their private thoughts.”

“It could be important, though,” Angeline pointed out. “It could be the break the four of us need.”

Mrs. Hamilton sighed through her nose and opened the journal to the very first page. That musty smell of old paper caught my nose, but that was the least of my problems.

“What's it say?” asked Angeline.

“'If you're reading this, I am dead. I have cut my own wrists and then proceeded to tie a noose around my neck because I have reached the end of my rope. I want it all to end. But I am not taking secrets to the grave with me. To whomever is reading this, if you found this, know that everything from me—everything, from my “sister” to my own name—was taken from me and I was in turn left with nothing. I was abandoned by those I called family, and by those I called friends. Know that they are guilty for letting this happen, for allowing everything to be taken away from me all because I may have said something absolutely awful in the past about my father's company. The consequence of me asking a question was that I had my identity stolen by a decoy who decided to play dead somewhere upstate and set me up in the process. I can't live with such agony, so consider this my farewell to the world. Feel free to read the rest of this journal as it might prove helpful to solving what wrong inside of my mind and to solving what the deal is with my father's company and how it's going to royally fuck up the entire state of New York, including the upstate region. It might be too late, I don't know. But the world has to know what happened to the heart of the country as it stopped beating all because of some scary advances in technology. The overkill and abuse of it all will send the state into a frenzy if it hasn't already, and upstate will pay the price dearly. As I said, it might be too late. If you see my “sister” Maya, kick her in the ass for me so she'll break apart into a million pieces. That should be proof that there's something going on here in New York City. If that happens, know that it's now in your hands to save the state. To save your home and the people who make it up.

Best, Candace Bradley.

Note: the very last thing I did before writing this and preparing my noose was I disowned the name Sorenson. I want nothing to do with it.'”

I gaped at her. I didn't know what to think.

“So Candace didn't die of a heart attack,” Lars muttered under his breath.

“She were trying to speak about the secret,” Mrs. Hamilton explained it out. “She knew something was going on and she knew they would get caught. She also put the word 'sister' in quotation marks.”

I paused for a second. “Sister” in quotation marks.

“Maya was like a crafted sister,” I suggested. “Like Pinocchio or Frankenstein or sump'n.”

“Of course!” Lars declared. “And it sounds like the family abused them and then flipped the switch on the both of them. More so Maya because she was the robot of the two.”

“Candace's identity was ripped right out of her hands and slapped onto someone else out of sheer spite of her,” Mrs. Hamilton continued. “All because Maya was taken from her because she started asking questions.”

“And then she killed herself,” I muttered under my breath.

“And then she killed herself,” Angeline echoed.

I was the one who found Maya. I was now in the hot seat. She said it herself. She said it herself!

Something outside the kitchen window caught my ear. I peered out the window pane at what looked like spiders crawling up the outside apartment wall.

“Oh, man,” I felt my stomach turn at the sight of them. “Oh my fuck.”

“What's wrong, Joey?” Lars asked me.

“Looks like we have company,” I pointed out. “And they're surrounding us.”


	10. for the fight

Angeline had scooped up her hand bag from the spot on the floor next to the front door. I bustled out of the apartment first given I was Mr. Hockey Player and the fast runner, followed by Angeline and then Mrs. Hamilton and Lars right behind me. Everything felt like a blur all around me. I couldn't get to the elevator doors fast enough. I couldn't push the button fast enough.

I had no idea what was after us, but all I knew was it resembled to something creepy crawly, a la spiders or something. I saw one with eight legs after all.

“Come on, come on, come on,” I muttered as I awaited next to Angeline, and the two of us waited before those silvery doors. I nibbled on my bottom lip as Mrs. Hamilton joined us; before Lars reached us, the doors slid open and I almost did a swan dive in there. Angeline joined me, and then Mrs. Hamilton and Lars, the latter of whom was quick to push the button about fifty times.

The doors squeaked closed and we descended to the lobby. I breathed heavy from the adrenaline, and yet I had to pay attention to Angeline to do anything that would take my mind off of the fact we were being chased by... something.

“John Plant? John—Fern?” Angeline muttered to herself as she rummaged through her things. “I swear, I wrote it down. I wrote it down when I was told of his name.”

“Who, Anthrax's new singer?” asked Lars as he swallowed down a bit of air.

“Yeah. John—something pertaining to vegetation, that's all I know. You might have heard of him, Lars. He's from—I want to say, Armored Saint?”

“Oh...” his voice trailed off. “I do not believe I know him, if I am honest, Angeline.”

Lars opened his mouth to yawn but a big hairy belch rumbled out, one so loud I felt it in my ass and in the metal bar underneath my ass.

“DAMN!” I shouted as he clasped his hands to his mouth to pardon himself.

“My goodness!” Angeline declared.

“Wow,” Mrs. Hamilton chuckled.

We reached the bottom floor and I led the three of them back outside to the car posted up at the curb. Nothing out there, save for a few puddles of rain. Mrs. Hamilton clambered into the driver's seat and I followed suit in the seat next to her. Lars and Angeline dove into the backseat; the latter barely had the door closed when the car roared to life and we drove off. We got about a block away from there when I let out a long low whistle. I turned my head to Mrs. Hamilton, who looked as though she had been running a marathon, or something akin to running a marathon.

“You got the journal still?” I asked her as my voice broke a bit.

“Right here—” Mrs. Hamilton held up her empty hands.

“Shit!” Lars proclaimed.

“Oh, hell no!” I said as I ran my fingers through my curls.

“We have to go back!” she declared as we reached a stoplight.

“Go back—what're you, outta yer mind?!” I demanded.

“Well, we gotta do something, Joey!”

“We're not goin' back there, Mrs. Hamilton! Whatever was comin' after us could kill us!”

“We have to go back, Joey!”

“We're not going back there!” Lars joined in.

“Alright, fuck this fucking horse shit—let's have a vote,” I declared.

“A vote?” Mrs. Hamilton almost chuckled at the notion.

“Yes, it's the only way we're gonna settle this is by way of a democratic movement.” I peered over my shoulder at Lars and Angeline. “All in favor of gettin' the hell away from here—”

I shot up my hand, and so did Lars and Angeline. “All in favor of goin' back to get Candace's journal—” Mrs. Hamilton raised her hand.

“Three to one!” I said. “Sorry, Leela.”

She reached over to smack my shoulder with the back of her hand.

“Ow!”

“Ow? That didn't hurt.”

“It did!”

The light turned green and we rolled down the dark damp street, back into the heart of the Bronx. Frankie and Charlie lived down this way, if I recalled correctly. Maybe, just maybe, I figured, we could bump into them.

“Okay—so all we know,” Mrs. Hamilton started again, “is Candace killed herself after her identity was stolen and after Maya was taken from her.”

“She also mentioned her dad's company, too,” Angeline added.

“You think you can do something investigative journalism, Angeline?” Mrs. Hamilton asked her with a glimpse into the rear view mirror.

“Do I think? It's my specialty. I am from the _New York Times_ after all.”

I peered out the window at the street signs. It was a long ways off, but all the times of going down this way to rehearse with Anthrax came back to memory right then. We could reach Manhattan if we kept going this way. It was a long ride, but I was determined to tell Mrs. Hamilton about it.

If it meant us not eating breakfast for a little while longer, then so be it. I was dragged into this on accident and now I had to do a favor for a couple of dead girls before I did any favors for myself.

By some miracle, some black magic, we managed to catch most of the stoplights green on the way down to the headquarters for the _New York Times_. I knew Montana studios was around there somewhere. Somewhere among the neon.

It was as if New York City had become the city of tomorrow almost overnight. Everything had a bit of neon on it. Everything, even down to the last manhole cover and the last newspaper stand. I wondered what Candace meant by her dad's company taking over upstate. Was this it? Was all of this about to make its way up to Syracuse any time soon? I had no clue.

But within time, we reached the tower holding the _New York Times_ and we parked at the half crumbled brick curb. We climbed out and we were met with the bright and kinda hideous glare of the blue and green neon lighting up the entirety of the heart of Manhattan. I took a closer look at most of what was around us: tubes and glossy, shiny silvery metal. Everything either had that or some kind of smooth looking plastic making up the outside of it. It was weird to be standing there on the curb, right down the block from where I used to work, and have it look as though it had advanced a full century from the rest of New York state.

“Right this way,” Angeline guided us towards those big clear glassy front doors. She rummaged through her hand bag for her keys so as to unlock it. While she did that, I glanced up at the sky, which, despite it being the middle of the day, had been lit up by the bright neon around us. I swore I saw something floating up around the clouds overhead, or maybe it was just my mind playing tricks on me. Either way, I couldn't tell what the thing was because Angeline grabbed me by the shirt collar and yanked me into the front lobby of the building.

The whole room smelled of fresh paper and a new school year. I glanced about the place and I couldn't help but wonder why, even though it was the middle of the day, the whole building was a ghost town. No one strode about the hallways—and you would think someone would have a pot of coffee for us to help ourselves, but no, there wasn't even that to be seen.

I found myself in something that resembled to a library, down the hall from the room with the copy machine. I strode down an aisle filled with books on mechanics and all that nonsense that laughs at me from their high shelves. I stopped at the end closest to all of the tables in the midst of the room. If I was thrown into this, I needed to know some things about things. How was I supposed to solve this when the girl who told me about it was dead and was totally vague about it?

Maybe it had to do with the neon outside, and the fact the City was a thousand years ahead of Syracuse now. It was a guess, but it would make sense given her mentions of it in that journal entry. If I only had a better memory, then perhaps I could deconstruct something out of it, something out of what I already knew about Candace. All the books before me were about just that: new things on the horizon and new works not yet seen. Things totally out of a science fiction novel.

I tilted my head to the side a bit for a better look at some of those author names. Or at least, that author name.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Angeline making her way to the big blocky thing pressed against the wall, the thing that took me a second to realize it was one of those big ass industrial sized printers. Something didn't make sense. Something didn't feel right, either.

I took a glimpse out from around the edge of the bookshelf and spotted something low and dark on the far side of the cavernous room. Something frizzy and dark rose up from behind it. We were the only ones in there as far as I knew, so it made no sense. What did make sense was my raising my voice.

“Angeline!” I called out.

“Joey!” she replied from across the room.

“Angeline!”

“Joey!”

“ _Angeline_!”  
“ _Joey_!”

“Angeline!” Lars called from the doorway.

“Lars!” she said.

“Lars!” I echoed her.

“Joey!” he said.

“Lars!” I said.

“Angeline!” Lars pointed to the far side of the room.

“Lars and Joey!” she said.

“Angeline!” I snapped.

“Mrs. Hamilton!” she said.

“Where?” asked Lars.

“Duck!” I said. Something shiny sailed from clear across the room towards the printer. Angeline dove down to the floor in time: it missed her head by a mere few inches. I looked that way again. It rose up again, against the looming vast paned window and the bright glow of the blue and green neon. I knew the shape of that squarish head with the fading hair. The same head that I looked at before I left the studio for the last time.

“PEEK A BOO!” Scott shouted.

“Scott!” I said as he held up his arm at me as though he was about to chuck that sharp thing at my head.

“Scott!” Frankie joined in from behind him.

“Scott!” Charlie echoed as he held onto Scott's arms. “Scott! Scott! Scott! Scott! Stop!”

He managed to subdue Scott, which left me to show myself to the three of them.

“It's me, Joey!”

“Oh. Hey.”

“The hell're ya doin'?”

In the bright light, I could see his facial expression softening a bit.

“Actin' on the—defense,” he explained in a gentle voice.

“Why?” I demanded.

“It's—It's kind of a long story.”

I turned to Lars. “I swear to God, you guys and long stories.”

“It's a long story,” he pointed out. “But may I ask what the three of you are doing here?”

“Montana burned down,” Frankie answered without hesitation. “Just yesterday.”

“F—what?!” I demanded.

“It burned down and we lost like a hundred grand worth of equipment. We're broke, too. We're busted. Each of us got evicted from our places—like one right after the other.”

“So you guys are livin' in here?” I asked them.

“We're kinda goin' from place to place,” Charlie explained. “John told us we have to get our shit together before we roll forth with anything more. 'No beatin' around the bush', as he put it.”

“John Bush! that was his name,” Angeline declared.

“Well, what're you guys all doin' here?” Scott asked us in a broken voice.

“Right after I got the news,” I started in a curt tone, “I found a girl—”

“Well, good for you, Joey!” Frankie said.

“—she was dead,” I continued.

“Oh.”

“And Lars here joined in with me and within a matter of hours, we found ourselves on a mission of sorts. We're kinda usin' her as our proxy to help us out. Apparently, if we solve what happened to her, we can do some help for New York state itself, including the deal with the neon outside.”

“So she's your dead girlfriend?” asked Charlie.

“No, she's not my dead girlfriend, Charlie. She's just a dead girl who happens to be my friend. Kinda.”

“If anything, the both of us were thrown into it,” Lars clarified. “At least, so we're told.”

“Could we be of help?” asked Frankie.

“If you want,” I said, my tone still curt. “And if you do, you have to promise me something and that's to not kick me out of the operation for no fucking reason.”

“Hey, it's your mission, man,” Scott assured me with a raising of his hands before him. “We'd just be along for the ride.”

I nibbled on my bottom lip. I glanced back at Lars, who lingered behind me with his coat wide open. I looked over at Angeline who held a stack of papers before her chest. Since we were all in New York, we might as well cooperate and ensure that everyone has a say in it, something I wanted before I was shown the door.

I returned to Scott with a nod of my head.

“Good. Let's keep it that way.”


	11. the mirror never lies

I led them all out of the library and into the dark hallway. Suddenly I found myself at the forefront for once; it wasn't even a few hours ago I had been held at the mercy of the three guys behind me. I dared not hold anything against them, though, especially since they seemed almost remorseful about what they did to me.

Every step down that hallway, I could feel the dark looming over me like a cold curtain. I couldn't grow hard or cold, but I had it within me. I could feel it rising inside of me.

Even with his soft brown eyes and benevolent expression, Joey Bellardini has a dark side to him, a shadow. Everyone does—mine just happens to be embedded in my black curls and gives me a reason to continue.

“Here's my office,” Angeline pointed out as we reached a heavy looking dark wooden door on the right side. She reached into her hand bag for her key and unlocked the door.

We were met with a large, spacious office that, despite of said space, needed a plant or two plants, or three hundred of them. Angeline herself padded around the side of her big desk and took a seat in that comfy looking chair. I watched her open the drawer next to her left knee so she could proceed to look up something, anything, about Maya and Candace and their family. Meanwhile, behind me, Lars was chatting with Scott, Frankie, and Charlie about something.

That memory of having come all the down from Plattsburgh to Ithaca smacked me right in the face. I knew nothing about thrash metal or the scene or anything pertaining to it. I was thrown into it cold and just worked my way up from there. To think it had to be thrown away yesterday; after today, and after hearing about them having no money and no place to go, it had shifted straight to anyone's guess.

I caught the sound of a throat clearing behind me.

“So, Angeline—do you think you have any idea to look?” Lars asked her.

“Well, for starters,” she began as she set a box of folders on the desk before her, “using the note from the hospital—I can look up the Sorenson name and also Candace's name.” She hesitated with her hands lain upon the edges of the box. She looked over at me. “What was her last name?”

“Bradley,” I recalled, almost out of my ass given Mrs. Hamilton lost the journal.

“Bradley! That was it.” I watched her shuffle through the folders until she reached something. How she knew where to look was beyond me—much like the three guys behind me, I was along with her ride through that big box.

Speaking of those three guys, I turned around to find them congregated in the doorway behind me; Frankie and Charlie were there, anyway. Scott had squatted down beneath a window sill on the other side of the hall. Lars stood across from him and I could only wonder what the hell was going on back here.

“I also wanna ask you guys—” I gestured to the three of them. “what happened to Danny?”

“That's—kinda the thing, Joe,” Frankie confessed. “We don't know. Montana burned down and he went missing.”

“How the hell could you guys not know? He's like a foot tall.”

“We just don't know,” he repeated with a shrug. “He's out there in the neon somewhere.”

“It was like Montana burned down and we ran out of there to keep ourselves from burning to death,” Charlie explained, “and I turned to Frankie and I was like, 'where's Danny?' and he goes 'I don't know.' We turned to Scott and he said the same thing. Danny pretty much high tailed out of there. We're still tryin' to figure out what caused the fire and we haven't heard anything. Where he went is another question altogether.”

“Where he went is another question,” Lars, Frankie, Scott, and I said at the same time, to which Charlie shook his head.

“Wow,” Angeline remarked. I turned back around.

“What's up?”

“Maya was in fact a robot,” she began as she held up a piece of paper, “created by Candace's father—and you were right, Joey, she was like a Pinocchio or a Frankenstein of sorts. He wanted to give Candace a sister. So he made her a kid sister out of what money he had.”

“What happened after that?” asked Frankie.

“Basically exactly what Candace had talked about in her journal,” she continued as she put her free thumb on the edge of the paper, “it sounds like her father went crazy and stole her identity. Says here he was suspected of stealing something and then the record of what was stolen had been wiped it away. There's an asterisk next to Candace's name and a note at the bottom of the page here saying it's unclear if Candace even exists. I wish I could show you guys the journal in question—”

“But Mrs. Hamilton lost it,” I said as I rubbed the tip of my nose.

“Mrs. Hamilton lost it, right! So you're just going to have to take our word for it. Candace obviously did exist, but anything official leading back to her is wiped clean. He took her name and everything from her and then buried her.” Angeline set down the piece of paper and picked up another one.

“And what's that?” I asked her.

“It's a photocopy of a record of all of Maya's writings. It's a copy, too, it's not the real thing. Poems—writing—all of it wiped clean. Whoever crafted Maya also went to great pains to ridding her as well.”

I peered over at Scott, who still remained squatted down to his knees on the floor beneath the window.

I couldn't hold anything against him, but there was an odd mirroring here. Whoever got rid of Maya felt weirdly similar to how they wanted to get rid of me. I recalled that phone call and the sound of Charlie's voice. They wanted a more fierce sound for the new album, or maybe it wasn't them after all, especially since they seemed more than happy to help me out here. I looked up at Charlie himself and those dark eyes looking back at me with a bit of softness. I peered past him right as Scott turned his head in my direction; he looked back at me with an almost wounded look in his eye.

I was probably seeing myself in those eyes, but I could feel it right there.

And then it clicked.

They didn't want to get rid of me, but the music industry did. Something larger than me, much larger, much more of a big fat entity, and something probably more powerful than me wanted to shut me out and forget the memory of me. To rid of me like how Mr. Sorenson wanted to rid of Candace and Maya.

“The fact you're able to find that, though,” I pointed out to Angeline.

“I know,” she remarked. “It's almost like—there's a full record of every notable person in New York state ever right underneath here. Even records of things you wouldn't imagine existing.”

“You never noticed that before?” asked Frankie.

“No,” she admitted. “I always knew this desk drawer here next to my knee was chock full of records, but not of this extent, though.”

“There's another page here that says Mr. Sorenson headed back up to upstate New York just a week ago. Around the shores of Lake Ontario to be specific. Like, Candace died and then he bounced out of here.”

“Where I'm from,” I stated.

“Lake Ontario?”

“Oswego. 'Bout an hour from Syracuse. He moved up there?!”

“I guess so?”

“So we have to return to upstate,” Lars noted, “—that makes—perfectly legitimate sense.”

“Can we get something to eat, too?” I asked her; I couldn't take it anymore. My stomach was starting to hurt me. I pressed my hand there but it did nothing. Something about that spot on my stomach in particular felt extra soft, like that of a teddy bear. I was so hungry, I was getting soft.

“You guys all hungry?” she turned to Scott, Frankie, and Charlie.

“We're pretty much homeless right now, so we could definitely use something to eat,” Charlie told her.

“Okay. Let's go fetch Mrs. Hamilton and then we'll all pile into her car and drive up to Monticello or something. The fact I'm looking at almost down to the minute detail records of Mr. Sorenson here is—is—”

“Creepin' you out?” Scott called from the hallway. But Angeline never replied to that. She picked up her bag and rounded the side of the desk again, and met up with me. We headed out of the room and into the hallway. As she switched off the light and locked the door, I looked over at Scott as he rose to his feet.

“Where even _is_ Mrs. Hamilton?” asked Lars.

“Dunno,” I confessed. And then I thought about it for a second. “You know, come to think of it, I haven't seen her since we got here.”

“Who even is Mrs. Hamilton?” asked Scott.

“She's a—lady of the night whom Lars and I are friendly with,” I explained.

“A little too friendly might I add,” Lars teased me, complete with a smirk on his face.

“At least you are,” I scoffed.

“Nahhh—you guys were in the front seat for four hours. You oughta have come closer at some point.”

“Yeah, well—”

“Well what?”

“You introduced me to her!” I insisted.

“You are in fact right—I did…” His voice trailed off and Angeline led us back to the front lobby. I still found it strange that there was in fact nothing that made the office an office around us.

“She couldn't have gotten far,” Angeline said as we spread over the floor of the lobby to search for Mrs. Hamilton. I watched Lars double back into the library. That was a big room; I figured I should go help him out there.

He had gone off to the left side of the room, which left me to the right side. I peered down each of the aisles and behind the copier. Nothing. No one there. I returned to the middle of the room right as Lars stifled another belch and made his way towards me. I peered over at him and the flustered look upon his face. He looked on at me like a prince with his eyebrows raised and his green eyes twinkling.

“Nothing here,” he said. And then his smile faded and those green eyes widened.

“What's the matter?” I asked him in a low voice. He didn't move.

“Lars,” I started again, “what's the matter?”

He swallowed.

“Joey,” he began through gritted teeth, “—very slowly. Turn around.”

I did just that, over my shoulder no less. Those… things that chased us out of the apartment had caught up with us and were crawling up the window. Or so I thought anyway.

There were several of them on the thing that Scott, Frankie, and Charlie had bunked behind. Each of them with eight legs.

“Mother fucking spiders,” I muttered.

“Mother fucking spiders with mother fucking knives strapped to their backs!” Lars exclaimed. I hurried over to him because I had no idea what they would do or where they were in fact coming from.

“Wait a minute, those aren't spiders—” I said.

“They aren't?”

“Last I checked, spiders don't have lobster claws, Lars.”

The one closest to us down on the floor turned its body towards us so I could better make out its hard looking black skin. It had no face but I knew what it was by the sight of the tail raised high over its body and its eight legs. The stinger looked razor sharp and ready to inject its venom into one of us. Add to this, it was about the size of my head.

“FUCK!” we shouted in unison. The both of us darted out of there and into the front room. Angeline turned to us with her eyebrows raised.

“What?” she sputtered. “What? What is it?”

“Things!” Lars squealed. “Very bad things!”

“A metric fuckton of 'em!” I added.

“Oh, shit!” Charlie shouted.

The bunch of us ran outside to the pouring rain and to Mrs. Hamilton's car still posted up at the curb. I didn't think she took out the keys when she got out.

I took to the driver's seat, while Lars dove into the seat next to me. Angeline and the three of them piled into the back. Sure enough, the keys were still in the ignition. By about a hair.

“Shit,” I muttered, “—shit—shit—fuck, I dropped the keys!”

They landed right next to my ankle.

And I almost hit my head on the steering wheel picking them up again. I stuck the keys into the ignition and the car roared to life.

The neon would have to guide me home.

“Sorry, Leela,” I muttered as I shifted the car into gear.


	12. lilith

I had tunnel vision for the first stint of the trip. It was incredible that I was able to even so much drive anyway. I felt more directed on leaving the City—granted, we would have to go back to fetch Mrs. Hamilton at some point but all I cared about at that point was the road ahead of us. I was taking us home. It had all been in my hands from that point onward.

I had such bad tunnel vision that I almost drove right off of the road. Stupid semi just about cut me off and the other alternative was to drive right into the back of 'em!

I turned to Lars right next to me in the front seat, who held onto the “oh, shit” handle right over his head like it was going to get away from him.

“Joey, look out!” he declared as we reached the back of another semi. I weaved out of the way and missed him and the car to my right by about a foot. Had I been any closer, I would've wrecked us all out.

“Out of my way!” I shouted.

“Out of your day, too?” Lars asked me. But I never replied. I was more fixated on getting our asses back to 'Swaygo. I didn't even hear what Scott had to tell me for about an hour until I knew for sure I was out of the woods. Until I knew for sure we were out of the woods.

By the time signs for Syracuse entered my view, I sank down in my seat a bit. I looked over at Lars who had put his hands down in his lap at some point. He looked as though he had just seen a ghost.

“Are you alright?” I asked him.

“Yeah, it's just you have been driving like a madman for the past few hours,” he remarked.

“Hey, don't blame Joey, though,” Frankie pointed out. “These truck drivers need their licenses revoked.”

“Thank you,” said Angeline in a soft voice. I let out a long low whistle. I knew we were far away from those creepy crawly things, whatever they were back there. I was close to home. We were close to home.

But on the other hand, I frowned at the sight of the road before us. Usually when coming into Syracuse up from the City, I can make out the sight of the skyline and the proverbial donut making its way through the heart of the city. I was met with nothing than the wispy gray and white fog coming in from the lake.

“Where's the city?” Scott beat me to it.

“I—I don't know,” I confessed as the highway spanned out into four lane freeway. Darkness. Nothing but nothing. A whole lot of nothing around us.

“This is more freaky than Mount Misery Road over on Long Island,” Angeline muttered.

“Or anything in Jersey for that matter,” Charlie added.

I swore I saw Mrs. Snow there on the road before us so I swerved off to the right. I didn't realize there was a pole there.

“JEEZ!” Lars yelped. But I missed it in time. I straightened out the car and brought us back to the road in time.

“Fuck it, I'm gettin' off here,” I muttered because I knew I was going to get our asses handed to ourselves. I ventured off of the next exit, one that was unmarked so I had no idea where it was headed. I had been to and from Syracuse my whole life—why didn't I recognize any of this here?

I spotted a cafe off of the side of the road: maybe I was just hungry. Maybe I just needed a cup of coffee. My stomach did in fact start to ache with it after all.

I came to the stoplight, to which I ran my fingers through my black curls.

“Good call, Joe,” Frankie told me. I peered into the mirror in front of my face at the four of them crammed in the back seat there. I lay my hand atop my stomach: I was itching for a big fat stack of Belgian waffles with a bunch of butter and some blueberries atop it. Belgian waffles and a fresh of coffee. We were back upstate after all.

“I just couldn't take another minute of that,” I confessed as I set my other hand onto my stomach.

“You're telling me,” Lars grumbled, but I didn't exactly hear him because my stomach started making noise at me.

“I'll buy us breakfast if you boys would like,” Angeline offered again.

“Please do,” Scott told her. The light turned green and, without having both hands on the rim of the steering wheel, we rolled forward. That is until the car almost went sideways. I clutched onto the wheel and guided us to that particular parking lot.

I didn't recognize Syracuse at all: it was as if the whole entire place had been turned upside down and inside out.

I couldn't get in there fast enough. I felt dizzy and kind of sick to my stomach.

While they all took their seats at the good sized table next to the window, I doubled back to the men's room behind us. My head was spinning. I wasn't really thinking straight—all I knew that if I threw a little water onto my face, I could probably think a little better.

I reached the door when I heard someone in front of me whisper my name. I looked up and spotted Cindy standing before the door of the ladies' room. She was wrapped up in a white leather letterman jacket and had on shiny silvery hoop earrings, and a black and red plaid mini skirt with black fishnets and black leather flats. Her dark hair streaked behind her like a thick mane.

“Hey, baby,” she greeted me with a warm little smile.

“Oh, hi, Cindy.” I returned the favor as the butterflies whirred up in my poor stomach. She tossed her black hair back from her face and neck. Her skin looked milkier and more pale than I had originally seen before. She moseyed over to me, and I pressed my back to the wall. Her lips were like a pair of dark red cherries glistening right before my face.

“You here by yourself?” she asked me.

“Nah, I'm here with my old band mates,” I quipped; the uneasy feeling inside my stomach would have to wait a minute.

“How 'bout you boys return to Black Orchid with me for a li'l round of strip chess?” she suggested as she let her fingers glide up my chest.

“Yeah, you'd—you'd like that, wouldn't you?” I suck at flirting. She puckered her lips at me. I thought she was about to kiss me right there right then, but she didn't. I was drowning in her perfume and the sweet aromas of her hair and her skin. She opened her eyes and gazed into my own.

“Go put some food in your belly first, though,” she beckoned me. “You look hungry, baby.”

“I am really hungry,” I told her in a broken voice.

Cindy ran her fingers down my chest and onto my stomach, and down onto the waist band of my jeans. I thought she would undo the button of my jeans right there, but then she tilted her head off to the side and kissed me right there on the side of my neck. I closed my eyes as she followed it up with another kiss.

“C'mere, baby,” she whispered to me: her voice crept over me like the tongue of a snake. “Give yourself to me. I want you, you sexy boy.”

She held onto the front of my shirt with those thin, elegant fingers. I let my knees buckle a bit to give myself to her. She pressed her fingers into my stomach as if she was trying to soothe the feeling inside of me. We were in that back hallway, almost out in the open, and yet she was fearless to give me a little love.

I could feel her breathing heavy through her nose. Her lips brushed over my skin and tickled me. I kept my eyes closed and tilted my head back a bit to give her more of my skin.

“Maybe—Maybe—” I groaned out; I had no idea where I was going with it.

“Maybe what?” she whispered into my ear.

“Maybe I should show you my dick,” was all I could think of. She put her arms around my waist. Her hands made their way to my ass.

“Time to kiss their asses good bye…” she whispered to me again and she squeezed me. “I missed this tight booty.”

“Would ya like a li'l slappin' on yours?” again, was all I could think of.

“Oh, you bad, bad boy,” she teased me. “You know we can't do that here.” She kissed me on the side of the neck again. Those cherry lips. Those fingers right in my ass.

She then pulled her head back. I opened my eyes to find her looking at me right in the face again.

“Go eat, baby,” she whispered to me. “Go eat and then we'll have some fun later on.” She winked at me.

“Back at Black, right?”

“Back in Black, yes.” Those dark red lips curled up back into that sweet warm smile once again. She kissed me on the lips and for a split second, I forgot where I was right then. She tasted like strawberries and freshly made cream, and then she looked into my eyes again.

She was in fact pretty hot. Dark haired beauty with dark eyes, so it was like looking at the sexy reflection of myself. I licked my lips because I wanted to taste her again.

“Can I call ya?” I offered her, to which she put her finger onto my lips.

“Let's not get ahead of ourselves now,” she assured me. She kissed me again and then flashed me another wink before she stepped away. I watched her walk around the corner, where I knew she headed over to the front doors and disappeared outside. I lingered there with my back to the wall for a moment before I gathered myself and returned to the table.

Scott, Frankie, and Charlie looked at me with puzzled expressions on their faces. Angeline tilted her glass of water back towards her mouth. Lars coughed and muttered something under his breath.

I could slice through the awkward feeling with a knife if I would. Frankie brought a hand to his mouth to stifle some laughter.

Angeline set down her glass and reached into her hand bag for something. She took out a little hand mirror and showed it to me. Cindy had left a big dark red kiss mark on the side of my neck.

“Oh, for cryin' out loud.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lyrics to ain’t my bitch, one of my favorite metallica songs! 🤘🏻🤘🏻


	13. igniter

I thought about my encounter with Cindy back there and I wondered if all of us there in that booth were invited to her li'l round of strip chess. Angeline could come with if she wanted. In fact, I imagined all of us just gettin' down and gettin' nekkid all together.

In the meantime, however, I needed to eat something. I couldn't hardly take it for another second. I couldn't get it in my mouth faster. I couldn't swallow it down faster.

It almost felt like I hadn't eaten in a thousand years. I shoveled in those pancakes as if they were trying to get away from me. I drank down that coffee as if it was the last one I would ever have in my life.

I had tunnel vision there. I was hungry. I couldn't take another minute with it. Once I had eaten down the first two cakes, I leaned back in the seat and rested my hands upon the top of the table while still holding onto my fork. I closed my eyes to which Angeline chuckled at me.

“Feel better?” she asked me.

“You have no idea,” I quipped back to her with my mouth full. I swallowed it down and then I lifted my fork for another bite. The whole entire time I was there in the booth, I remained silent but I listened to the three conversations around me. There was the one between Scott and Frankie, there was the one between Lars and Angeline, and there was one right behind me in the next booth over.

Scott kept running his fingers through his thinning hair as if it were bothering him. Frankie eyed the crown of his head every so often as he shoveled down those scrambled eggs.

“I think my hair's gonna go bye bye here in a while, Frankie,” Scott was saying over the chatter in the restaurant.

“You oughta just say 'fuck it' and shave your head, Scott,” said Frankie once he swallowed down the one bite.

“I might look like a villain, though, Frank.”

“You'd be hell of a cool villain,” Charlie chimed in.

I turned my head to Angeline and Lars, both of whom were talking about the whole thing with Maya and also Mrs. Hamilton.

“I hope she'll be alright there down in the Big Apple,” she confessed to him before she took a sip of her coffee.

“Mrs. Hamilton probably knows some of the neighborhoods down there,” Lars assured her. “I am positive and sure that she shall prevail there.”

“I still have my worries because the City isn't for the faint at heart. You said she's from Pennsylvania Dutch country?”

“Yes,” he answered. “But she's a sex worker, though—she is tough, I promise you.”

Meanwhile, behind me was an exchange between an older dude and his friend about—

“So the city just vanished into thin air,” said the old man behind me.

“Apparently,” said his friend. “I woke up this mornin' and saw the buiding was doin' this like—shifting in and out of existence thing, like it was blinking.”

I frowned at that.

“Blinking?”

“Yeah. The walls looked like they were made of some kind of light and they were flashing in and out. Like someone was messin' around with the light switch.”

I thought about Candace's last journal entry. They were coming to upstate New York and by the sound of it, it's as if they had already arrived here. Which meant we had to finish up here soon enough and get a move on back to 'Swaygo before some other bad shit happened.

I took another sip of coffee before I took some more bites of pancake. Granted it was hearsay but I wasn't willing to take any chances. I had stumbled upon two dead girls on a whim and it had been placed into my hands almost by luck. I had my old band here with me, plus Lars and Angeline.

I had all the help I could possibly find and get my hands on, so I needed to lead the way from that point onward.

I could feel myself getting fuller by the fifth cake: at least the shaky, jittery feeling had gone away so I could think straight at that moment. I could make my way home and see if any of that glitchy shit had reached there, too. If it did, then we were too late. If it didn't, then we had to act fast. Time was of the essence no matter what happened, though.

Problem is I didn't know where to start. All I knew was what I knew from Candace's diary and even there my memory was fading a bit. God damn it, why did Mrs. Hamilton have to lose the stupid thing?

Maybe we could start from the hospital. They had Maya and Candace on record. It only made sense. I was sure Angeline felt the same way. I made a mental note to bring it up to her by the time we were back out in the car. I couldn't bring it up to her sitting there because she and Lars were more fixated on talking about cheese and biscuits, or something like that.

But I needed to finish this out. There were a few bites of pancake left and I wasn't willing to let them go to waste, either, even with my stomach swelling even fuller. I was hungry. I had to take six. Six big fluffy ones with all that butter and those lush blackberries on top plus that cup of coffee.

I had no idea if I was able to drive thereafter. It was only another hour to get our asses back home, but I was feeling all warm, soft, and heavy just sitting there.

This scrawny boy needed a fork poked in him because he was done and needed a basting.

I leaned back with the cup of coffee in my hand. It felt like my mom was hugging me around the waist and holding me for a prolonged time, complete with her hand on my stomach. I thought about Cindy holding onto my shirt and putting her arms around my waist. I wondered if she was willing to touch me some more, and that time without clothes on no less.

No, no, no, I had to keep my focus even with my belly feeling distended and my chest as warm as a summer day there upstate. I had to help out these two dead girls before I checked out the girl who was to knock me dead with her tits and ass.

Angeline, who kept her promise, paid for our breakfast and I led the way back out to the car. I had no idea if I could drive back, but I reassured myself that it was a mere hour there back to my driveway. I would have to undo my jeans before I went any further. The second I unfastened the button I almost immediately felt even more relaxed and even fuller than before.

We got about a mile down the road, right into the heart of Syracuse, where there were no buildings no less, when I felt that weird shocking sensation underneath my metal bracelet once again. Like someone pricked me underneath the wrist, right in the tender part of the skin.

I shook my hand about to alleviate the feeling, and it worked, albeit with a raise of the eyebrow from Lars.

We drove all the way into the hole of the donut where the clouds finally broke and let through some rays of sun. Indeed, it was as if all of those skyscrapers were fading and then reappearing. My city had turned into something else, but why? And what was it even doing?

We finally left Syracuse and made our way into the fog up towards 'Swaygo and the full feeling inside of me began to subside. Lars covered his mouth and stifled three huge belches. Odd, given he didn't really eat much at breakfast: just a little cup of black tea and a couple of pieces of sourdough toast with tiny bits of butter on top. Charlie and I were the big eaters with my pancakes and his Denver omelette. I thought he was as hungry as me, but the sounds that came out of his mouth and from underneath his hand made me curious. Moreover, they smelled like red meat, like steak, like he had had steak at breakfast instead of tea and toast.

Yesterday, it smelled like steak.

Either Lars had a digestive problem he had neglected to tell us about or something had broken this prominent nose on my face when I wasn't paying attention. He did it again and that time he didn't have his hand over his mouth.

“Jesus!” Scott proclaimed.

“Yeah, I felt that one,” Frankie added. Meanwhile, I was trying to keep my eyes open, even after drinking down that cup of coffee. I felt too warm. I needed to lay down with my pants still undone while taking a nap. And then, once the signs for 'Swaygo entered my view, I felt the shock again. But the only thing technologically advanced out there were the power lines.

And yet it was more intense that time around.

The ones in Syracuse felt like a push pin right into my skin. This felt like someone snapping a rubber band on my wrist.

“Ow—”

I shook my hand again. Lars peered over at me. I felt it again and shook my hand about again.

I glanced over at him and his eyebrows knitted together.

It stopped for a moment, and I thought for good.

And then it happened again and complete with an electrocution sound.

“Ow!” I yelped. “Ow! Fuck! God damn it!”

“Joey!” Lars shouted as he pointed out the windshield.

“Shit!” I veered off to the left and just about rear ended a guy in a little gray car that looked like a bar of soap. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

But by some black magic, I managed to salvage our asses from driving off the road and I kept going all the way back to my apartment complex.

“Okay, so how're we gonna do this?” asked Frankie once we reached the driveway.

“I was just thinking that,” I confessed. “God, I really wish Mrs. Hamilton didn't lose that damn journal because we could'a used it and I wouldn't haveta wing it. All of youses hang tight, I gotta get the mail.”

I rolled up to those rows of rust colored mailboxes until I reached my own. There was a white piece of paper taped to the front of the door there.

“What's that?” asked Angeline. I rolled down the window and picked it off.

“'The cafe by the school,'” I read the scratchy hand writing aloud.

“What's there, I wonder?” asked Lars.

“Not sure,” I confessed. “I do know it's open mic night there some nights—like, I think tonight is. There's a reservation over that way, too.” I shrugged at them. “Who knows. But after what's happened so far, I'm willin' to check it out.”


	14. monster’s ball

“So it’s open mic night tonight,” Scott muttered to himself. I led the way into that vast room, the one that stood next door to the student union where anybody was invited to come into even without proving the fact they go to the school. The sun had gone down about five minutes before, and I needed to change my clothes anyway. I knew it'd be snowing once the sun's rays finally disappeared behind the clouds.

I was the only one who knew, too. Charlie and Frankie huddled close to me there next to the front doors in their tiny li'l sweat shirts while Angeline, Lars, and I were all as warm as toast under our heavy winter coats; Angeline and I both had on black leather gloves. And it helped that I still felt very full from the stack of pancakes and berries from earlier, and by some chocolates courtesy of Lars. My stomach was still very warm and soft to the touch when I put on a clean black button down shirt and I couldn't help but touch my bare skin right there.

The bunch of us congregated there on the edge of the room and watched the kids there roam about in preparation for open mic night. The smooth floor before us looked as though it had just been swept down to the last crack in between tiles: the whole place smelled of lemons and fresh brewed coffee. Indeed, I spotted a couple of little coffee makers on the other side of the room.  
I thought of moseying my way over there and grabbing us all a cup each but Angeline had talked me out of it. Scott suggested we take a table but I didn’t think one of those would hold the six of us, given the one closest to us barely held five.

There was a girl with thick black hair near the front of the stage and I thought of Maya upon seeing her. I wondered about that note I found taped to the front of the mailbox, like what was even the point of it as I watched her climb upon the stage with a shiny black guitar in hand.

She had a little white rose about the size of a quarter tucked behind her left ear and a whole corsage of them on her wrist, and she wore a black silk blouse with the top two buttons undone. She reminded me of Louise back at Black Orchid, just from the waves of her hair and her kinda dark complexion. When she faced the crowd, I noticed a deep crescent shaped scar on the side of her face, but it didn’t look like any old acne scar. It looked fresh and bright pink, like she had just underwent some kind of surgery beforehand.  
She took a seat right smack in the middle of the stage and cradled that beautiful guitar in her lap. Lars lingered next to Frankie and I complete with a thoughtful look upon his face. I returned my gaze back to her bowed head and spindly slender fingers crossed over the frets. It reminded me of the beginning of the decade and I was playing in bands all over upstate, and my buddies and I would watch the acts before us to see if there was anyone we liked. She raised her head up a bit as she picked up on the chords.

The room fell silent and I wondered if she would sing, too. No microphone stand to be seen, though.

Something up on the stage caught my eye. It was off to the left side, like tucked away in the shadows: something small in stature and blocky looking, like a miniature version of Scott.

But I paid more attention to her, her right there in the middle of the stage and letting her fingers fly. I always wondered about guitar players, being a drummer and whatnot. People I could jam with while I was out from Anthrax, and while Anthrax was out from Anthrax no less. She was in the zone: just the way in which her fingers moved and crept around those frets like the tentacles of an octopus.

And it took me a second to realize she was playing a cover of “Crossroads” by Cream, except she had rearranged it altogether. And without vocals.

I pictured myself up there singing with her. Singing “Crossroads” with her.

And then I realized what was up there with her, right there right next to her. There was another copy of Maya there on the stage next to her, and she appeared to be behaving the role of guitar stand: her hands formed these little cups so as to hold onto the neck. Her eyes were closed and her lips had been sealed closed with what I think was super glue. It was hard to tell what it was that plastered her lips shut.

But I turned to Angeline, who stood right behind me.

I stepped out of the way a bit so she could see what was going down up there on stage, right next to her. But then I had a better idea.

“Angeline,” I said to her.

“Yes?”

I gestured to the stage, and I hoped she could see where and what I was pointing at up there. I let her peer over my shoulder and in turn follow my gaze up to the surface of the stage. She knitted her eyebrows together.

“That—looks like Maya,” she muttered right into my face.

“I know,” I replied with a nod. She nibbled on her bottom lip and then she raised her finger at me.  
“Here—” said Angeline, but I didn’t know what she meant by that. I turned back to the sight of the girl on the stage. That statue of Maya on the side of the stage hung there in my line of sight. It was like I couldn't unsee it.

Over those wandering notes from those guitar strings, I could overhear Angeline talking to someone behind us. Frankie and Charlie even peered back there behind us. In the dim light, I could see her speaking to a kid with a ball cap on his shaggy head.

“Okay, thank you,” she said, and then she returned to us. “Apparently, Candace was right about tech reaching here, but because it's a smaller town than Syracuse and New York City, it's being introduced at a slower pace.”

“That doesn't explain that up there, though,” I pointed out.

“That leads me to this next point,” she continued, “they're introducing things like that up there on stage. Get people used to it so it's brought in at a slower pace, and the kid I was talking to said there's a bit of a nefarious quality to it. Because Maya malfunctioned and broke apart, her creator made another one. It's like he's making clones or something like that.”

Angeline inched closer to me so we all could be clustered right there on the side of the room; I noticed the guy she was talking to slipping past us.

Her hand slid onto my stomach and she held it right there.

“Ooh—” she breathed out.

“What?” I asked her in a hushed voice.

“You're warm,” she told me as she kept her hand on my stomach. “And really soft.”

“It's all those pancakes I had this morning. I still feel good.”

“So—oh, I see it now,” Scott noted as he gestured at the clone of Maya. I followed his gaze and I noticed the guy Angeline talked to striding up to the stage. It was the tech guy. “We're gonna be around a copy of a dead girl.”

“Are we going up there?” asked Frankie.

“Well, we're here for open mic night, aren't we?” Charlie pointed out.

“Hey, we gonna be playin' with corpses?” I asked them.

“Maybe,” Lars replied to me with a twinkle in his eye.

“Well,” Scott continued with a little grin on his face, “we're gonna have to play as a four piece—unless one of you guys are willing to play lead.”

“I don't know if I am able to play drums, though, Scott,” Lars confessed. “I have—put on a fair amount of weight since the last time I played a gig and behind the drums.”

“You still have it in you, though, don't you?”

“Probably—probably not. I don't know.”

The girl finished out her arrangement of “Crossroads” and the room erupted into applause. Behind her, the guy in the hat and a couple of others set up a drum kit plus a couple of guitars and a couple of microphones.

“Shall we?” Scott offered with his hand held out towards the stage. Those eyes twinkled underneath those thick dark eyebrows. He and I both led the way up there. I had my gloves on and the buttons of my coat closed up to hold in the warmth.

Scott picked up the one guitar while Frankie picked up the bass and Charlie took to the drums. Lars and Angeline lingered off to my left. I turned my head to the right to the statue. It was in fact a clone of Maya, but with her eyes and mouth sealed shut. The whole thing made me shudder.

I stood before the microphone stand. Right hand resting on the microphone. Fingers on my left hand crept around the pole. My left hand close to my hip bone and the slimmest, most delicate part of my belly.

I was the chanteur. The lounge singer. The boy down on his luck with more boys down on their luck. The guy who stumbled upon a phony dead girl and stood next to a carbon copy of that same phony dead girl. There I was, singing as though I had been inserted back into the stage at L’Amours again.  
  
I always winged it whenever I sang with Anthrax because the lyrics were always presented to me in hasty fashion. That doesn’t mean I never enjoy it, though: I always put my heart into it during “Caught in a Mosh”, and it was especially good to sing to “A Skeleton in the Closet” for these kids. I wanted to keep going and whip out a deep cut from _Armed and Dangerous_ , but I remembered it was open mic night, and thus we had to keep it short. We did however receive a standing ovation, and Scott and I gave the first three people high-fives as we departed from the stage.

Two girls gave Frankie, Charlie, and I Mardi Gras beads.

I had no idea what all of that was for, but all in all, it was excellent to climb up on stage and perform with them again. I started to wonder if I was at all important to Anthrax: when I had gone out, everything about them had fallen apart. I missed Danny, though. I missed hearing him performing a solo.

In the meantime, Lars returned home with me and took to the couch again. Angeline offered to take Scott, Frankie, and Charlie to a hotel downtown there once we were back in the car again.

Even though it was almost midnight, it still felt early. My heart still pounded in my chest from the adrenaline. I hadn't broken out a sweat, but I felt so warm and full of energy right there in my room. I took off my gloves and ran my fingers through my black curls.

“This fucking thing is driving me nuts,” I muttered to myself. I stripped off the bracelet and set it down on the top of the desk. It was akin to taking off my shoes after a long sixteen hour day in the studio. I unbuttoned my shirt and hung it back up in the closet, and then I took off my jeans and lay it over the top of the dresser. I crawled into bed and lay my head down on the pillow, and pulled the blankets up to my neck. I still felt warm from earlier, such that it made me fall asleep so fast.

I woke up to the feeling of something light and feathery brushing up against my hip bone and my thigh. I opened my eyes and took a glimpse down at the sight of Nerissa lounging on her side next to my knees.

She was the ghost of a young lady who still managed to retain her round, very full figure and her inky black hair. When I first saw her, she wore this slinky black lace dress with a low neckline and she reached down to my hands as if she wanted me to touch her tits, even though I could only feel a shiver and a creeping sensation given she had passed on. She told me she had died by way of suicide and she wanted to look good when she went, but she never elaborated just how she had committed it. She was my late night favor when the going got lonely. I could confide in her no matter what happened.

Here, she wore another slinky lace dress with a low neckline but with long sleeves, and she let her dark eyes wander over me. This little ghostie was undressing me even though the sole clothes I had on were these blanket upon my body. Her black cherry lips curled up into a smile for me and she cocked out her hips.

“You wanna have a moment alone?” I asked her in a broken voice. She crawled up closer to me and ran her fingers down my chest. She peeled off the blankets to expose my skin. Her fingertips felt like ice on me, but then she kissed me on the lips and it was like I had been drinking down something cool and refreshing after a long day’s work out in the desert.

She slithered underneath the blankets and reached down my shorts. I could feel her fondling me: those cold fingers giving me chills but also making me wake up a bit for her. I was cold, but I was also warm.

I rolled over onto my back for her. She pushed back the blankets even more, and then she straddled my hips and took a seat. Her thick knees pressed up against my hipbones. She locked eyes with me: those deep ghostly eyes gazing back at me and swallowing me whole. She let those fine big scoops of lady flesh sway about with every gyration. I wanted to reach up and touch them but she swatted my hand and wagged her finger at me.

I had no idea if I was hallucinating because she seemed to be getting heavier, like her face and figure both looked rounder and her belly hung out a bit like a Buddha. She then climbed off of me and put her lips around my erection.

“Jesus!” My voice sounded so far away from myself even though I was the one saying it.

“Don’t break, baby,” she breathed out at me in between bites.

She then clamped down hard on me, such that I actually woke up.

I peered about the dark room for any sign of her. I was alone: all I could hear was Lars’ gentle snoring in the next room. I reached down to touch myself: the skin was still soft and delicate, and yet I was a little moist right at the tip.  
  
Something about that statement there, right before she bit me. “Don’t break.”

And I wondered if any of it had to do with Maya and the fact she literally broke apart in the hospital.


	15. oceana

“Don't break,” I mumbled to myself. “Don't break. What could it mean?” I closed my eyes again and I kept them closed, but for whatever reason I couldn't hardly fall asleep.

I could still feel Nerissa's fingers running along my skin, those ghostly little tips caressing me down. I needed to focus, though: I needed to sleep. I needed to sleep so I can focus, or something like that. I rolled over onto my back and let the muscles in my chest and my stomach relax.

I was tired. I was tired, exhausted to be specific, and yet I couldn’t fall back to sleep worth shit. I sighed through my nose and rested my hands on the soft part of my stomach, right on my waist. I let my fingers creep over the smooth skin around my navel; I was warm underneath the covers and yet I still couldn’t fall asleep.

Nerissa’s words rang through my mind. She swelled up and said that to me. Maybe she looked at my little body and foresaw herself crushing me. That was a mere guess on my part but it made sense. And yet it also didn’t: Nerissa was a ghost. Lighter than air. Lighter than air and only came to me when I fell asleep and the incense fumes lingered in my room. Except I hadn’t been burning incense before I fell asleep, so of course it made no sense.

The thought of it having something to do with Maya breaking apart also nagged at me. Nerissa was trying to tell me something, but what?

I opened my tired eyes and gazed up at the dark ceiling over me. Dark shadows from the middle of the night right over me. I was used to looking into the darkness: standing at the edge of the unknown and walking the edge of it as if I was skatin’ along with the hockey stick out before me. The hockey stick and also the microphone stand. I was as thin as the razor’s edge: it only made sense for me to walk along it and keep it from breaking apart.

I directed my gaze to the clock on my nightstand. Through the darkness, I could make out the shape of the hands.

The short one on the five... the long one... the long one? Not on the five, no.

Quarter to four! Jesus Christ...

I rolled my head back to where it lay flat atop the pillow. I could feel myself drifting off again, or maybe it was just my mind messing with me because I was so flippin’ tired.

Don’t break. Don’t break apart... don’t break apart into nothing yet. Yet?

I was definitely hallucinating at that point. Something brought on the hallucination. Probably from my laying still and not doing what the fuck else. I started hallucinating and swimming in the ocean of my own mind. But that also got to me. Nothing yet. Don’t let it happen yet.

What.

I opened my eyes again and I swore I saw myself pressed against the darkness over me. I was looking at myself, living in nothing more than a tiny little box, with nothing more than the clothes on my back and a tiny cup for spare change. No help to be found for a starving musician.

Right next door to me were Scott, Frankie, and Charlie, all looking more haggard than old dish rags. Lars was nowhere to be seen. I gazed on at us and my mind started to wonder elsewhere.

For want of Joey, the band was lost. For want of... something else, the noise was lost and the bunch of us were left behind as a bunch of broken men. Suddenly, the alias of Jelly Bellardini took a whole new meaning as I took my seat on the curb, and my face had been drained of all of its color, and my knees quivered from that intense hunger.

I gazed behind us to the sight of New York City and Syracuse, both as bright as day and so squeaky clean, my starving scrawny ass could eat off of those shiny metallic walls. They had sorted out the kinks and now everyone had started anew with the feel of the machine.

They? My thoughts were making no sense. Or maybe they were. Who the hell knows.

I could hear music, or something akin to music. I was met with silence and the stillness of a pair of cities who had given into themselves and regenerated, and in turn left us out of the equation. Everything was squeaky clean and alive and well behind us, and yet... something was missing. Something was still broken.

For want of Joey, the band was lost. For want of the band, the music quieted down somewhat. For want of the music, the industry had to make due with what was lost. For want of the industry, the conditions were lost. For want of the conditions, the entities were lost. For want of the entities, the music was lost and everyone turned to something else.

Something else. Something else that revamped the cities and that same something relegated us to the curb and broke us.

Of course. Of course! That was it!

But then I woke up before I could tell Scott, Frankie, and Charlie. I never had had such a vivid dream before, and it left my head spinning. I rolled my head over the pillow to check the time.

Ten after five. The sun was beginning to rise up behind those cold, dense lake effect clouds. Perfect!

I rolled out of my bed, out from underneath the covers, and I was met with chills almost immediately. I rubbed my upper arms with my hands and darted out of the room to the bathroom. I hesitated before the thermostat and tried to adjust it. The damn furnace must have malfunctioned at some point during the night so the thermostat stopped working: it felt like walking through a refrigerator from my room and across the hallway, and then it felt like a freezer in the bathroom.

But then again, even as I tugged down my shorts, and I began to think about things, the dream also didn’t make much sense to me. Why would we be pushed to the curb like that in the first place? Wouldn’t it all be in our favor? Wouldn’t these new advances be for our benefit? It had to be. It had to work in our favor.

And yet there was something about it all that bugged me. Something about the very notion itself made me wonder if it really was in our favor.

I washed up and made my way back to the hall. I thought about waking up Lars, but then again, it was too early. Or maybe not, because I wondered if I was onto something. It came to me in a dream: it had to mean something.

Neglecting to put on a shirt, I made my way into the front room, where Lars lay on his side so he faced the back of the couch. He let out a quiet snore as I crouched down next to his fine little head. I cleared my throat.

“Lars—” I shook him. He never stirred. I knelt down next to him for a better hold of him. “Lars—Lars—”

Nothing. I brought my mouth closer to his ear as if I was about to feed him a secret.

“Lars!” I said in a normal voice. He still never awoke. But then again, I knew something that awake him. I stood to my feet, and made my way into the kitchen, and turned on the light. He had draped his overcoat over the back of the same chair I had sat Maya in: I crouched down and peeked into the pockets. He had a handful of black tea bags in each pocket.

I took out one and fetched a mug from the cupboard. I didn’t have a kettle, but I could boil water in a saucepan—pasta is yummy. It also helped to stand there before the heated burner on the stove top, especially since I had no shirt on.

I folded my arms over my chest, and sighed through my nose, and waited for the water to boil.

There was something that my lucid trip couldn’t answer, either.

“She's bein' replicated—copied over and over and over—but—” I was cut off by the sight of Lars himself standing there in the doorway of the kitchen. His body still looked quite heavy and full, even though he hadn’t eaten much of anything since we came together. He rubbed his eye and groaned in his throat.

“What the hell is going on?” he asked me in a broken voice.

“I wanted to wake ya up ‘cause I had sump’n to tell ya,” I told him in a single breath. “I also wanted to make you some tea.”

He blinked several times and showed me bit of a touched expression.

“That’s funny because I—” He cleared his throat. “—I wanted to tell you something.”

I raised my eyebrows at him.

“Oh?”

“Do you know how the both of us are living on borrowed money and whatnot?”

“Well, you are,” I corrected him. “I've been savin' my money from the get-go.”

He rolled his eyes and fetched up a sigh.

“I had a dream that the two of us had to owe the whole city of Syracuse a shitload of money to even so much as stay alive.”

“Wow.” I gaped at him.

“Yeah, it was pretty insane. What did you want to tell me?”

I nibbled on my bottom lip. There was an awful lot to tell him, and it came from a lucid dream no less.

“I had a dream we got pushed out onto the curb and we were all broke. You, me, Scott, Frankie, and Charlie. All of us. The cities were all well-to-do.”

“Huh.”

“It was a lucid dream, too. Like I lay perfectly still in bed and it was vivid like a drug trip or something. I dunno what it means, though, if I’m honest.”

“Pushed out to the curb and having to pay a shitload of money,” he muttered. And I still had no idea what any of it had to do with Maya, either. I rubbed my eyes.

“I need a place to think, though,” I confessed.

“Perhaps we can get our asses to Black Orchid later on?” he suggested.

“It wouldn’t be all that fun, though,” I reminded him as I turned towards the stove and held my hands over the heating pot of water.

“Oh, yeah, that’s right, Mrs. Hamilton is still back in New York City,” he told me in a broken voice; he belched again and that time he covered his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Right, and who knows if she has any means to get home, too,” I pointed out. “They're walkers, but she's not in a particularly rich parta town, though.”

Lars shivered and held his arms close to his stout body to better keep the heat in.

“Do you have any matches?” he asked in a hushed voice.

“What'chu need matches for?” I almost laughed at that. He replied with a shivering up and down his spine and down his arms.

“You want me to torch you?” I asked, mortified.

“I could be warm forever if you did that,” he muttered under his breath.

“I ain't torchin' you, man—I do gotta get that thing fixed, though. The thermostat. I think that’s your money dream talkin’.”

Lars shuddered as he made his way back out of the kitchen. Since I was with Anthrax, I couldn't find the time to fix the thermostat. And now with Anthrax not really being much of a thing in and of itself anyway, I probably should've put my money where my mouth was and fixed this damn thing before it got too cold. All I had were my sweaters and a couple of blankets in the hall closet.

He groaned from the cold. I took the saucepan off of the heat, given at that point bubbles began forming and making their way up to the surface.

“What do you do when you have nothing to eat?” he sputtered.

“Ask thy neighbor? I dunno…” I picked up the tea bag and took the bag itself out of that little packet. I lay it down at the bottom of the mug and I placed the mug into the basin of the sink. “I got food, though. Not a lot, but it’s somethin’, though.”

Careful not to burn myself, I poured the water into the mug. Within mere seconds, I was met with that delicate smell of black tea.

“What time is it?” he asked me from the couch.

“After five. Why?”

“Perhaps we can meet up with Angeline and the boys here in town for breakfast.”

“I dunno if Angeline’s even up, though,” I confessed. “An’ you know how nights can be after a round of touring even.”

“Oh, for sure. Trying to get back into your regular sleep schedule and whatnot.”

“Add to this, they’re sleeping in strange beds.”

“Strange beds in a really moist parta upstate no less,” I added under my breath. I let the saucepan sit in the basin and I carried the mug into the next room for him. I stood next to the couch and gazed on at him in the dim light.

“I dunno how you take your tea,” I confessed to him. “I don’t have honey and I’m gettin’ kinda low on sugar, too.”

“No, man, that’s excellent!” he insisted, and I handed him the mug. There was a knock on the door.

“I’ll get that,” he offered me

“Okay, now, I have to put on a shirt,” I told him, and I made my way back to my room for a sweatshirt straight out of my closet. I slipped that smooth white cotton one over my head and my body, and I felt warm almost instantly; I lifted my black curls out from underneath the collar as I returned to the front room. I recognized her blonde hair and the exhausted look on her face.

“Angeline!” I greeted her.

“We were just talking about you,” Lars told her with a grin on his face and an adjustment of the steeping tea bag.

“I wanted to do some more investigative journalism here in upstate New York,” she explained as she set her hand bag down on the top of the couch. “I told Scott where I was going, and now here I am. The three of them had kind of a rough night last night, so I’m letting them sleep.” She sniffled the air.

“Lars’ tea,” I remarked.

“I thought so!” she declared with a smile on her face. “It also smells like old socks in here.”

“I’m a hockey player and it’s just me here,” I explained with a shrug of my shoulders.

“Makes sense now.”

“I also don’t really have much of anything to eat for breakfast, if I’m honest.” But then again, I just wanted to go out to eat.

“I did see a little cafe about a block from here on the drive over,” she suggested.

“Oh, my hockey buddies and I would go there after a round when I was going semi-pro,” I explained, and I couldn’t resist the grin from crossing my face. “There was a big jukebox in there and I’d sing to whatever they put on, and that was how I knew singing was for me.”

“Can I drink my tea first?” Lars asked us as he brought the mug to his mouth.

“The prince needs his tea,” said Angeline.


	16. headspin

It would be a little while before the three of us could make our way to that little cafe Angeline had talked about given Lars nursed the hell out of that cup of tea. Lucky for me, it gave me some time to change my clothes and put on my boots and my coat. Once I stood up to fetch my coat from the closet, I could feel something touching the round part of my ass.

I turned around and spotted the faint outline of Mrs. Snow right behind me. Her wispy white hair drifted behind her oblong head and her thin knobby fingers caressed over my forearm and my hip. Her cold touch sent a shiver up my spine. She wagged a finger at me before she vanished into thin air.

“I wasn’t gonna touch myself,” I scoffed as I reached for my big heavy overcoat. Sometimes I wondered why I lived in such a salubrious location, complete with a ghost who came to me in wet dreams, a ghost who didn’t want me to have a wet dream, another ghost who probably had no clue what a wet dream even was, and another ghost who probably hadn’t had a wet dream in the years leading up to his death. Something told me the day I had a wet dream when they were all present was the day we were all fucked.

I put it on followed by the lacy knit scarf my aunt gave me when I was seventeen. I remembered I had my gloves tucked in my pockets, so I put those on, too.

The second time in a row to go out to breakfast with Angeline, except this time around, we had music at our helm. I joined them once Lars put his mug in the kitchen and Angeline led us outside to the bitter upstate New York cold—bonus for it still being early, too, thus the lake effect lingered over us like a cold, crisp lace curtain. It was mornings like this I wished I could’ve just stayed in bed, stayed all snuggled down under the covers with a cup of coffee and a plate of my mom’s cannoli to make my tummy feel warm and very full. Instead I was going out to breakfast to discuss some nonsense about two dead girls; the snow crunched underneath the soles of our boots, and I noticed there was still some lines on the sidewalk from where Lars and I took a walk and found Maya on the back of that van.

That van. Why would someone put her on the back of it instead of the back seat like what we did? In hindsight, it was almost as if someone already knew about her. Someone in that apartment complex.

It was missing from the spot on this morning, but I couldn’t help but think about that as Lars and I climbed into Angeline’s dry, comfy car. I nestled down in the front seat next to her, and I promised to keep her handbag down in between my ankles, right there down on the floor. Lars took to the back seat, right behind me. As she fired up the car, Lars let out another belch from so far down in his stomach that I swore I felt it in my bones. I wondered if he had a problem with his stomach as we made our way out towards the driveway and the street out before us.

I also couldn’t stop thinking about that van in the parking lot. There was that old lady who walked past us when we dragged her into the closet.

And why did no one stop us? Surely someone could’ve seen us and stopped us and asked us what the hell was going on. Whoever found her laying on my porch could’ve stopped us, but they didn’t. It just made no sense the more thought I put into it.

Angeline drove us to that cafe in question, and I noticed some of that delightful lake effect snow heading our way. All wispy and gray and looming over the lake before us: at the end of the first block stood a shed next to the bus stop. Right inside that shed was a little copper plaque talking about the Iroquois tribes up here, namely the one I had descended from, and I mention that because the very thought of someone finding Maya and tying her on the back of a van made me think of my own getting caught up in my own heritage at times. Tied up in my own roots only to have them break apart all because the industry doesn’t like you.

I felt the bitter lake effect cold inside my bones as we climbed out of the car: I felt it in the roots of my curls, too. I helped Lars out of the car; he looked extra tired right there, and I had no clue as to why, either. I knew black tea had some caffeine in it but not a lot.

All I wanted was a bit of coffee and a fat stack of pancakes again, and also ask Angeline about what she had in mind for us. The three of us took to the table right smack in the middle of the room; across the room from us stood that jukebox in question. Ah, the memories! And they especially came flooding back when one of the cooks flashed me a peace sign and mouthed the word “injun” at me. I winked at him and returned the favor with the sign of the horns.

Within time the waitress came over to us. I took off my scarf and my gloves, and lay them down on the top of the table, right there next to the silverware.

Lars unbuttoned his coat and ran his fingers through his smooth hair.

“I have to hand it to you, Joey,” he began.

“What’s that?” I asked him as I brought the glass up to my lips.

“How you can tolerate the cold up here.” He shuddered from the feeling. “Jesus Christ Almighty.”

“Says the dude from Denmark,” I retorted.

“Says the dude from Denmark, right! The prince, rather.”

“The dark knight,” I added to it.

“The dark knight! I love that. It’s mysterious and powerful, straight out of Copenhagen. If I am the dark knight, you can be the black knight.”

“We gotta be careful not to confuse the two,” I pointed. “The black knight, or the woodsman.”

“The woodsman?”

“Yeah, ‘cause we’re from right near the woods. The wilderness. Finger Lakes and Ithaca. Call me the Tin Woodsman.”

“That can be your stripper name,” he corrected me.

“What, Tin Woodsman?”

“Hell yes! The black knight is the name I think of because you were the one who found Maya on the ground. You serve like the black knight, the man in black you are.”

“Anyways, gentlemen,” Angeline began with a clearing of her throat, “seeing as we’re here at the moment, let’s get down to brass tacks. So far, all we know is that Syracuse has already undergone a transformation of sorts. For all we know, it could be heading over to Buffalo and to Rochester.”

“For all we know,” I pointed out as I took another sip of water.

“Right! And since we don’t have a face to attach to the entity causing all of this, it only makes sense to uncover the source of it while it’s here in Oswego.”

“There’s also the whole tidbit ‘bout Lars kinda knowin’ her, too,” I recalled.

“Oh?” Angeline raised her eyebrows at him.

“My wife knew her,” Lars explained. “But it starts and ends there, though.” He hiccuped and I once again caught a whiff of something. The poor guy had stomach issues, that was for sure.

“Then it’s probable you had some kind of window into her life then,” Angeline pointed out as she reached into her handbag for something.

“But what if it isn’t?” he asked her.

“Then I’m going to have to go right to the root of the problem and bypass you all the while.”

“I only know she was a writer,” he pointed out.

“It’s probable that you can open more doors for us,” she suggested. “We’re hot on the trail anyway.”

“Perhaps the probability of such things is in our favor,” Lars remarked.

“Perhaps it’s probable we can probably find something more,” Angeline pointed out.

“The probability of probability?” I asked him.

“It’s probable that Joey here is going to walk out of here with his belly feeling fuller than he ever has in his life,” Angeline tried to follow along. “It’s also probable that if we have some kind of paper trail leading us to Maya, we can uncover some kind of truth about her. We can break open this case.”

“It’s also probable that... I don’t really have much to say,” Lars pointed out.

“It’s probable that it’s probable,” I added, but then again, I just wanted to say something about this, “but is it possible?”

“It’s probable but may or may not be possible,” Lars quipped.

“It’s probable that it’s possible, but is it possible that it’s probable?” I asked him.

“If it’s possible that it’s probable, is it probable that it’s possible?” he corrected me.

“If it’s possible that one of us could drop dead after breakfast here, is it probable that you know something Angeline doesn’t?” I challenged him.

“Maybe,” he answered with a twinkle in his eye. “But alas, it could be probable that if you ate a shitload of pancakes, it’s possible that you wouldn’t have the same problem I have with my stomach.”

“If I had the same problem you’ve got with your stomach, my stomach would be as big as Lake Ontario,” I said with a rub of my belly.

“ _Would_ be, meaning it is in fact possible,” he pointed out.

“Once again, it’s probable that it’s possible, but is it possible that it’s probable?” I asked him.

“We’re getting too caught up in trivial horse shit here,” Angeline said with a wave of her hands. And then I realized she was holding a pen and paper. “So, Lars do you know anything else?”

“About Maya?”

“Yes.”

“She was English, too. Hailing from England.”

“You also told me she had Nordic parents, didn’t she?” I recalled as I leaned back in my chair: I kept my one hand on my belly and held onto my water glass with the other hand.

“Yes, she did! That was how we clicked in fact.”

“So it is in fact possible that you know more about her,” I pointed out.

“It’s possible but it’s not probable.”

I rolled my eyes so hard they may as well have rolled right out of my head.

“It’s probable that it’s possible, but is it possible that it’s probable?” he mimicked me, complete with the upstate accent. I turned to Angeline, who looked exactly how I felt right then.

“You mind if I put on some music?” I offered her.

“Go right ahead,” she replied without hesitation. I took another swig of water and then I stood to my feet. I padded over to the box: I had some loose change in my pocket and I knew it was enough. It usually proved to be enough.

I pushed that black button so the thing would flip the albums over. More often than not, I'd spot Journey or Foreigner or Boston or something, anything that would tickle my fancy. I would always find something in a case like this. But instead I was met with a bunch of plain solid black squares.

No music at all, period. The fuck?

“How goes it?” Angeline asked from behind me.

“These are all blank,” I told her as I kept pushing the button. “All of them. Blank as a slate.”

She peered over my shoulder.

“Huh,” was all she could say to me. No music and the back of that van was driving me insane. I needed something to help me think about things and stuff. I returned to the table feeling disgruntled. I needed music. My lifeblood. My heart and soul. I needed it to help me think and to help me focus.

Angeline had doubled back to the ladies’ room. Meanwhile, I was antsy. It was one thing with Cindy in the hallway there in Syracuse. But now I was out of options. The inseams of my jeans itched me and I felt the waist band growing tighter. That proverbial itch I couldn’t scratch.

I stripped off my coat and draped it over the back of my chair. I took another swig of water.

“Sit tight, I gotta use the boys’ room,” I told Lars, to which he nodded at me.

“If I feel full of myself, am I fully myself?” he muttered to himself in a broken voice, and it was that moment I wanted a window into his mind. I padded down the hall, right to the room next door to the ladies’ room. I didn’t need to piss: I just needed a moment.

I forgot how clean this room was; for some reason, as I undid my jeans in a stall, I thought of the time Anthrax toured in Germany and our van rolled over in a forest. I woke up to the smell of pine and the realization that help was right nearby. I looked up at the glory hole right above my waist.

It was a big hole, big enough for my fist. For some reason, I pictured myself fisting Cindy. Black Orchid was right nearby, anyway.

Right nearby. Not too far away.

Wait a minute.

It was like an epiphany.

They didn’t stop us because they knew we’d find her again. They knew we would see her on the back of the van and take her to the hospital. We were in fact caught: it was just more insidious than I had believed. Someone was watching me. Someone was watching Lars and me.

And they were about to come after the both of us by taking away the one thing that meant the most to the both of us. Music was in my soul, and in Lars’ soul, and they knew it. Maybe it was just paranoia talking, but it made sense given what happened there in the parking lot. We were headed into a trap... but it was to find out what happened to these two girls.

I slunk out of the stall feeling like my actual head had opened with a catharsis of sorts.

“Of course,” I muttered to myself as I washed my hands.


	17. grim sleeper

I cleaned and dried off my hands and ducked out of the bathroom so as to tell Lars about my epiphany before it left me. My hands quivered from the rush of adrenaline: my pants almost fell down my legs as I ran back towards him. But I was quick to keep them up and fasten the band of my jeans as I stood there before him. He gaped at me as he brought his glass of water up to his lips.

“Where's Angeline?” I asked him as I struggled for a breath.

“She's right there—” Using his free hand, he gestured to the left of him, and I turned my head to see her striding towards us. Angeline made her way back towards us, and albeit with a look of concern upon her face.

“What's going on?” she inquired me once she came within earshot.

“I figured out Lars and I are being set up,” I told her without hesitation.

“How?” he asked me as he lowered his glass from his lips.

I stopped right in my tracks, but then I started again.

“Why do you think no one stopped us when we found Maya on the back of that van?” I asked him. He knitted his eyebrows at that.

“I'm not sure how that can signify a set up, though, Joey,” Angeline pointed out.

“It was in broad daylight—and it was in broad daylight when we were down in the city. Surely someone oughta have seen us.”

I turned back to Lars who never changed the pensive look on his face.

“Let's discuss more over breakfast,” Angeline suggested as she took her seat there at the table. I followed suit and I took a sip of my coffee. Rich and beany, nice and warming, with a little kiss of sugar to go with it, just how I like it. Lars sipped his cup of black tea. Another cup of tea.

Perhaps that would explain the pain in his belly and the incessant belching on his part. But then again, it also didn't.

He gazed on to the other side of the room, and with that pensive look still firmly plastered upon his face. He never spoke until the waitress returned to us so we could order our food. Another big stack of pancakes for me.

Meanwhile, I also had something eating at me. Something concerning Lars. He was hiding something from us. He was hiding something from me. And I wondered if it had to do with the fact that no one saw us in the parking lot, but then again, that was a mere assumption.

And yet it nagged at me even as the food arrived for us. Those pancakes felt light and fluffy against my tongue, and the blackberries on top tasted so sweet and so tart at the same time. I never realized how hungry I was, either: I had thought of my mom's cannoli earlier and yet this felt even better. The scrambled eggs were perfect, light and fluffy like the cakes, and all I needed was a little kiss of black pepper all around the top.

I paid a little attention to Lars and his picking at his hash browns. They looked delicious, all nice brown and crispy looking, and thus it made me wonder if he was even hungry at all.

Angeline cleared her throat as if she was about to speak up, but she never did.

I thought of our exchange earlier and I wondered if Lars was in fact deflecting things. Rambling about probability and possibility and making my head spin. He sighed through his nose at one point and then he took another sip of black tea.

I reached about a third of the way through the second pancake when I picked up my mug of coffee and cleared my throat. I could feel myself growing fuller even after eating a fraction of the stack of cakes. I was going to overdo it again: I felt the waist on my jeans tightening. If I didn't know any better, I would swear I would pop a button even with the slimness of my belly.

“Lars, can I talk to you somethin'?” I offered to him. He raised his gaze up to me as if he was playing coy with me.

“Sure,” he replied in a soft voice. I brushed off my lips with the cloth napkin and then I led him back towards the jukebox: that made my head spin even more. Then again, Angeline had a point. I wasn't sure how I put two and two together while I took a piss in there.

I led Lars to that short corridor which would in turn take us down to the back door. I ducked around the corner and whirled around to face him. I set a hand on my stomach, which felt comfortable enough with those pancakes. He stood before me and tucked his hands into his pockets.

“What is on your mind?” he asked me as he still kept his voice in a soft tone.

“Are you feelin' alright?” was all I could ask him.

He sighed through his nose and lowered his gaze to the floor.

“You alright?” I asked him again.

He closed his eyes.

“Lars?”

“I didn't tell you this,” he started, “but—my wife is dead.”

I gaped at him.

“Oh, man, I'm so sorry.”

“No, no, no. It is my fault. I should have told you sooner that she was gone. Ever since she passed, I have had digestive issues. It is difficult to eat.”

“Jesus,” I muttered.

“Yeah, it's—” He cleared his throat, and I knew it was from heartburn. “—it's kind of hard to talk about. And I am usually a chatterbox about things.”

“Do—Do you mind me asking you what she died from?” I had to be gentle with him given it was a pain alien to me.

“S—S—,” he sputtered. “She—hanged herself in our bedroom.” I closed my eyes. I have never wanted a way of going to have a face so I could punch it before, but... here we were.

“Yeah,” he almost breathed out that word. I opened my arms for him; I felt him move in close to me. I put my arms around him and I felt him breathe heavy through his nose. He lay the side of his head against my collar bone: the crown of his hair brushed against the round part of my chin. I felt his hands riding up the curvature of my back. His heavy body was warm and soft like a teddy bear.

“You have no idea how much I have wanted this,” he whispered to me in a broken voice. “You have no idea—how much I wanted a mere hug.”

“I'll give ya free hugs whenever you want, man,” I vowed to him, also in a whisper. He let out a soft whimper from the back of his throat. “I'll give ya free hugs like the skinny mother fucker with a tank for a belly that I am.”

He chuckled and I felt some tears leaking out from his eyes onto my shirt. He lifted his gaze and peered into my face: his eyes turned a bright pink from crying.

“When you said—we might be walking into a trap—I immediately started worrying,” he confessed. “I am worried that we might in fact wind up dead like her.”

“We won't,” I assured him, even though I had no solid way of proving him just that. “We won't—I promise.”

He sniffled and wiped a tear from his eye.

“I also hope I'm wrong, too,” I confessed to him.

“And, even if you aren't,” he started in a broken voice, “we have to be brave. How did you feel when you were told you were out from Anthrax?”

“Frightened,” I answered. “Pretty pissed, too.”

“But you were scared, though.”

“Yeah—I still am, too.”

He sniffled again. “I felt that way when Cliff was killed in the bus accident. That exact same way.”

“I remember you guys gettin' pissed about it,” I recalled.

“Well—James and Kirk were,” he corrected me. “I just shut down. But losing her—losing my woman—” He closed his eyes again. “—it stirred something up inside of me. And yet, I had an epiphany myself.”

“And what would that be?”

He opened his eyes at me again. “I have to be brave,” he answered as he wiped away another tear. “Be brave and go forth on my own into the wilderness. You and I—we have to face it straight on.”

He fetched up a shaky sigh.

“God, you are so warm,” he told me.

“Not as warm as you, though,” I assured him.

“Let's go eat breakfast,” he suggested as he let go of me and led me back to Angeline there at the table. She frowned at the sight of the tears in Lars' eyes.

“Are you alright?” she asked him. “Is everything okay?”

“Oh, yeah,” I assured her as I picked up the fork for another bite of pancakes. “He was just having a bad reaction to some dust or sump'n.”

She knitted her eyebrows at that but then she shrugged in response.

I reached the end of the stack of cakes when she reached into her bag for something.

“Joey,” she began.

“Mm-hm?” My mouth was full of cake and blackberry.

“This is for you—” She handed me a silvery bar thing and it took me a second to realize that it was a candy bar.

“Oh, boy!” I said once I swallowed the bite.

“It's for being a total badass,” she told me with a sly grin on her face. I returned the favor before I took another sip of coffee. My breakfast wasn't as rich as the one I had had in Syracuse but it definitely held up in the ranking. I knew I would have to take it easy on the pancakes at some point in the future because I foresaw my waist thickening up at the whole shebang. Thickening up and looking fuller than usual. Still skinny and trim but a little fuller in the waist.

I downed the rest of my coffee as she left a tip for the waitress.

“Alright—let's go wake up the Three Musketeers and get their asses into gear,” she said to us; I took a bite of the chocolate bar before I put my coat back on. I was quite full, but I wasn't about to let it stop me from starting on it, though.

I felt so warm and snuggly against that raw lake effect coming in, and I felt even warmer once I climbed back into the passenger seat next to Angeline. She drove Lars and me back to the hotel where she, Scott, Frankie, and Charlie were staying in. The whole entire time, we never discussed about Maya and Candace and I figured it had to do with my speaking up about that thing. It was one of those one story low running hotels with a dark slate roof and tinted windows. Looked very cheap but not like a dump: I knew the four of them were warm and cozy in their room the night before.

I almost lost my balance as I climbed out of the car from the full feeling inside my stomach. Lars was kind enough to help me; the three of us made our way to the blue door of their hotel room. Angeline took out her key from the inner pocket of her purse and unlocked the door. She led us into the cozy warm room where we were met with a concerned look upon their faces.

“What's going on?” she asked with a raise of one eyebrow.

“We've gotta get back to New York City,” Scott advised us with a bit of haste and a lacing up of his boots.

“What for?” asked Angeline as she set her hands on her hips.

“Danny called us,” Charlie replied. “He fell down a hole.”

“Oh—Oh, shit,” I muttered. “You gotta be kiddin' me.”

“Also, Joey thinks we might be walking right into a trap while looking into the whole thing with Maya and Candace,” Angeline added.

“It's in our hands, though,” Scott pointed out as he ran his hands over the tops of his thighs and his knees.

“It's in our hands but it could possibly get ourselves killed, though,” Frankie corrected him.

“Well, if we're walking into a trap, I wonder that we might have to go around it somehow,” Lars suggested. “But how?”

Frankie snapped his fingers.

“Masks!” He turned to Charlie. “You found those pieces of cloth last night before we went to bed.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah!” He doubled back to the nightstand on the far side of the room. He opened the drawer and took out a bunch of squarish pieces of fabric. “Yeah, I found these underneath our pillows before we went to sleep last night. Just underneath our pillows.”

“Just right there?” Lars asked him.

“Just right there,” Scott echoed.

“These oughta protect us,” said Charlie as he put the one orange bandana over his mouth and nose.

“Protect our faces and our schnozes,” I quipped as he handed me a black bandana.

“So if he fell down a hole, how did he find a phone?” Lars asked them.

“No clue,” Scott confessed. “All he did say is the entire downtown area is going batshit insane with the technological nonsense. He says it doesn't even feel human and anything human is disappearing.”

Lars hesitated with a bright red bandana cradled in his hands.

“Oh my God,” he muttered.

“What?” I asked him as I tied it around the bottom half of my face.

“MRS. HAMILTON!”


	18. pomona (shit happens)

There came a point in this adventure wherein I looked at everything happening and started to laugh at everything happening. This was that point.

I had the bandana wrapped around the bottom half of my face so I looked like a cowboy.

Cowboy and Injun, if I do say so myself. But I led the way out of the room and back outside to the bitter cold. Whatever was going down in the City was something we had to tend to lest something happened to Danny or Mrs. Hamilton. I buttoned up my coat once I had made my way outside to the car. I slipped into the front seat while Angeline took to the wheel once again.

We waited a few seconds for Lars, Scott, Frankie, and Charlie, but we were about to be caught up in a blizzard or at least a rainstorm courtesy of the lake. I huddled down in the seat next to Angeline with my arms folded over my chest.

“We’ve gotta get this show on the road, you four,” she muttered from behind her bandana: she took a glimpse at her wristwatch. Time was of the essence at that point.

“Freezing my junk off,” I said, to which she peered down at the crotch of my jeans.

“If I touch you there, could it fall right off inside of your jeans?” she asked me.

“If you touch me there, I might just wanna go a li’l further than that,” I teased her.

“And if you go a li’l further than that, it’s gonna be as dry as a bone, big boy, ‘cause I ain’t takin’ it.”

“Dry as my bone or yours?”

“Both. And if it falls off inside there, I might just pick it up and play with it.”

“Ummm... you didn’t say the magic word,” I pointed out.

“I didn’t say it?” she scoffed. “You didn’t!”

“I’ll say it if you say it,” I told her.

“If I say it, then it’s no longer serious.”

“No longer serious? The fuck?”

“It’s no longer serious because you said the magic word,” she quipped, which only made my head spin.

“Right, like I’m gonna call up my parents and say ‘hey, Mom and Dad, I can’t make it home for dinner tonight... I’m out getting nekkid with a chick for serious reasons.’ They’re not gonna take that too well, Angeline. I doubt your parents are gonna take it well, too, given we’re both Italian.”

“Of course! Because their little boy’s getting serious with a girl, and so soon after he got fired from his old band.”

“But it’s not serious if I say the magic word, that makes no sense,” I confessed. She opened her mouth to say something about it when the door behind me flung open and Lars all but dove inside of the back seat behind me. Scott followed and then Frankie and Charlie squeezed in right next to them. I pushed my seat forward and knitted my knees together to give them more room back there.

“Alright, let’s get movin’!” Angeline declared as she fired up the car. We rolled out of there and began on down towards the City. Four hours in that car with the lake effect rain coming: I was sure we’d go off of the road at some point given the heavy weight in the back seat and the slickness of the pavement. I kept my hands stuffed in my pockets for the first hour of the trip: when we left ‘Swaygo, the heater gave out on us. Within mere minutes, I could feel the tip of my nose turning into ice from the cold.

The entirety of Syracuse once again was doing that weird “flickering” thing, even with the clouds around us. We reached the inner city donut when Angeline started cursing under her breath.

“What’s up?” Scott asked her from the cramped back seat.

“We’re running low on gas,” she said, “‘cause we’re carrying a heavy load. God damn it.”

“It’s alright, we’ll get off here,” I told her. Indeed, we took the next exit to the nearest gas station and within a matter of minutes, I knew what she was talking about. It was almost like someone knew we were coming.

We reached the red light and the car sputtered and almost died right there. I could feel my heart pounding inside of my chest. Angeline slammed her hand on the rim of the steering wheel.

“Come on, god damn it!” she shouted. She managed to keep it going until we reached the street, and we were practically running on fumes at that point. My stomach turned and I sank down in the seat.

The car died right there. The whole thing fell silence.

“Oh Jesus,” Scott said.

Scrambling, Angeline brought the car to the curb and tugged on the parking brake. She rested her arms upon the steering wheel and fetched up a sigh.

“So what do we do?” asked Lars with a bit of reluctance.

“Get out and push, maybe?” Frankie suggested.

“Yeah, the gas station is right up there.” I pointed out the windshield. I sighed through my nose because I knew where this was going from that point onward. I was the first to climb out of the car and into the intense, wet cold—it started to sprinkle once I set my feet onto the sidewalk. It was going to snow at some point: I could feel it in my bones. Frankie followed suit, and then Charlie. The three Italian boys, of course!

I took to the right tail light, while Frankie had his hand on the middle of the trunk and Charlie the left side. I put one foot forward, followed by the next. Frankie followed my lead, as did Charlie. The rain picked up the pace right then, right onto our bare, exposed heads.

The three of us worked together and managed to push the car with Angeline, Lars, and Scott inside: she steered the car away from the curb, while out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Scott and Lars peeking at us through the window. The rain fell even harder onto our heads: I could feel the curls making up the crown of my head matting down. A couple of them fell right into my eyes.

We got about ten feet away from that spot when Charlie slipped and almost fell ass over teakettle onto the wet pavement. Frankie and I stopped to help him up but they kept going on down the street, into a red light no less.

Lars said something and they rolled back onto curb to keep themselves from driving straight into traffic. Frankie and I helped Charlie to his feet and we scrambled onto the sidewalk underneath a sycamore tree.

“Are you alright, Char?” asked Frankie.

“Yeah—I’m more worried about them, though.”

Right as he said that, the car tapped right into the side of a transformer box. We froze right in place, but nothing happened.

The back door swung open and Lars almost fell right out of the back seat. Scott followed suit; they covered their heads with their hands and ran over to us. Angeline locked the doors and made her way towards us.

“Are you guys alright?” I asked them once they came within earshot.

“Yeah, we’re just—shook, is all,” Scott assured me; he patted down the thinning crown of hair atop his head even though he was barely in the rain.

“So what do we do now?” Lars asked Angeline.

“Well, let’s find a place where I can use a phone and call my office. We have no other way of contacting either Dan or Mrs. Hamilton, so the best I can do is hit up who I know back in Manhattan.”

“I mean, come on, the gas station’s right over there,” I pointed out.

“Those pay phones are outside, though, Joey,” she argued. “You five stay here—I’ll be right back.”

She strode past us to the spot where we broke down, and at first I wondered why she was headed back that way, and then I spotted the cafe across the street. Angeline fished through her handbag for something before she crossed the street: Lars meanwhile shuffled closer to me to keep warm. I could still feel the hug he had given me there in the restaurant, pressed snug up against my body like a little teddy bear.

“Let’s get out of the rain, why don’t we,” Scott suggested; I mean, yeah, even though Angeline has been helpful in a way, there was no way we were going to stand there underneath a sycamore while it’s pouring rain. We headed back up towards the car and the gas station, right as the rain pummeled the ground around us. I pushed a lock of wet hair off of my brow when I noticed something about that transformer that they bumped into. The back side of it had pushed out a bit and revealed something that resembled to a stairway inside of there.

“Joey, check it out!” Lars saw it, too: in fact, he pried open the door all the way and there stood a stairway to oblivion.

With our hair matted to our heads, we bowed inside of there and into the darkness; Charlie tugged the door closed behind us so there was a bit extra light guiding our way. Or so I believed: it looked as though the light came from in front of us rather than behind us.

Lars was eager to lead us down those steep grated steps into a passageway of some sort; the sole light was a milky blue one that looked as though it shone out of the floor. I couldn’t exactly make out the shape of anything around us, but then again it was probably smooth.

“What the hell is this place?” Charlie’s voice echoed off the walls around us. Lars stopped right in front of me. I stopped myself but Scott then ran into my back and almost shoved me forward. It didn’t help matters that Frankie did the same, as did Charlie. We would’ve been a row of dominoes had Lars not been there.

“The fuck you doin, Lars?” Frankie demanded.

“Do you guys hear that?” he whispered.

“I don’t hear anything,” I confessed.

“Shhhh...”

We fell into silence. Indeed, there was a low hum before us. I felt Scott duck out from behind me; in the darkness, I could see his silhouette hurrying towards wherever the noise was coming from. I hung there and I wondered what was going on when a light overhead clicked on.

He stood on the far side of the room with his hand resting upon the light switch. I turned my head for a better look around us.

The walls were in fact smooth with brick and mortar but there also stood these webs of wires and neon all across them. I noticed a bundle of wires at the base of the wall to our left that resembled to vines. Frankie walked past me to check out one cluster of vines on the wall. I turned around to find Charlie doubling back to the stairway.

Lars fetched up a sigh.

“Well so much for that,” he grumbled.

“So much for what?” I asked him.

“I thought we were onto something here. All it got us was this strange room and these funny looking wires. I feel like I’ve wasted our time, like how I often feel like I wasted Metallica’s time.”

He bowed his head.

“If it makes ya feel any better,” I started, but then I stopped myself.

“What’s that?” he asked me. I nibbled on my bottom lip and cleared my throat, but I didn’t say anything.

“Joey?”

“I often feel like I’m pestering people,” I confessed to him. “Like I’m a nuisance of some sort.”

He gaped at me.

“You?”

I nodded my head.

“But you seem so full and so confident in yourself!”

“Right, I seem that way. But really I’m just beggin’ for attention like a dog. I’m always wanting to talk to people and get to know them all a little better.”

“But if you wanna be around people, why go through all that trouble, man?” he wondered as he folded his arms over his chest. I shrugged.

“It’s just how I am,” I replied. He squinted his eyes at me.

“It’s... It’s funny because James and Kirk were always trying to get me to shut up, too, except I would move mountains for them. I was always trying to get us to the next level.”

“Put yourself out in the open like that because they weren’t willing to.”

“Right! And it sounds to me like you do the same but on a far more personable level.”

I shrugged again.

“I tryta be a personable kinda person.”

“And all the personable persons have a means of pushing you away, too.”

“They’re not personable persons, though,” I pointed out.

“The personable persons have to find a personable person to be a personable person.”

“Me!”

“And yet you get outright pushed away. See, whenever I did it with Metallica, everyone opened their doors for me. So—perhaps you’re judged for other reasons?”

“People don’t wanna know what I’m all about.”

“They don’t want you to know that you’re a personable person,” he quipped.

“Right! Well, maybe.”

“Maybe? It’s more than plausible, Joey.”

“If it’s more than plausible, why avoid the hell out of me?”

He paused, albeit with a twinkle in his eye.

“Aha! So there’s a hole in your thinking.”

“Of course,” he quipped. “There be holes in everything—“ Angeline strode into the room from right behind us.

“Speaking of holes,” I muttered to myself.

“So how’d it go?” asked Lars.

“I left one of my colleagues a message and when I came outside, I noticed Charlie waving me over here,” she replied in a single breath. “I also called my attorney.”

“Why?” Charlie asked, stunned.

“To make certain of something at the Times—it’s a legal matter, so I can’t really talk about it.”

“Hey, check it out!” Frankie called out from behind us. We turned to find out that he and Scott uncovered something underneath the light switch. We congregated around them to find they uncovered what looked to be another transformer box, wedged in the floor, except this had a bunch of tiny dials and buttons and shit on the face of it. On the top of the board was a strip of paper tape with messy scribble reading: “SYRACUSE: MAIN CONTROLS”. I could only assume that whoever was here before us had much bigger plans than any of us could fathom.

“This whole place is about a thousand years ahead of everyone else,” Lars remarked: his voice echoed over the walls around us. The sound of wires breaking and cracking, akin to the sound of someone cracking their knuckles, caught my ear. I looked up to find some of the vines growing up towards the ceiling like slender fingers. Charlie, who stood right behind me, glanced up at them for himself.

“Um,” he started, and yet Lars, Frankie, Scott, and Angeline paid no attention to us.

“Guys,” he said; the wires crept up all the walls like snakes. All around us. I felt his hand gripping onto my sleeve.

“Guys,” I joined in. Nothing.

“Guys,” Charlie repeated.

“Guys,” I continued: it was like the two of us were in a separate world compared to them.

“Guys!” Charlie raised his voice. Frankie lifted his head.

“Wha—“ The color left his face to where he resembled a bowl of two day old oatmeal. “Oh—“

Lars turned around himself and his eyes widened.

“FUCKING CHRIST!” he shouted. Scott and Angeline both yelled out and the six of us ran back towards the stairway, and yet it seemed as though it was further away than before.

“What the hell?” Scott declared in a loud voice. The wires sprouted towards us like the tentacles of an octopus; one lunged for my throat. I never thought I would die soaking wet in a weird subterranean room with a vine-wire around my neck without the help of a lawyer-writer, but here we were. But I gripped onto it like I was holding my microphone stand and yanked it off the wall with all of my strength.

Apparently that only made them mad.

“Oh FOR GOD’S SAKE!” Lars shrieked. But Charlie was quick to reach the stairway, followed by Scott and Frankie, then Angeline, and then myself. I almost yanked Lars right up the stairway because the steps were so steep, and I didn’t care if he was too heavy, either. I collapsed onto my back on the soaked grass outside with him on top of my chest. Panting, I lay there for a moment before I nudged the door shut with my foot.

“I dunno bout you but I’m definitely gonna sleep well tonight,” said Frankie, who stood right before the crown of my head.

“I just like to sleep,” I confessed. Sleep and fill my stomach nice and full. Don’t we all.

Lars picked himself off of me and let out another hairy belch.

“Damn, son,” Scott remarked.

All I could think about was that box down there, down below us. I knew we were close to the answer and potentially seeking justice for Maya and Candace, but it was like they knew we were coming. Meanwhile, down in the City, Danny was missing and Mrs. Hamilton was in there somewhere, too. And even by knowing this, I could feel myself laughing at the whole thing already. I started thinking about my situation and what happened with Anthrax, and now all of this happening with Syracuse and New York state. There comes a point when things get so fucking ridiculous that you have to snicker to yourself a bit.

Once Lars had climbed off of me, I cupped a hand over my mouth to keep myself from being heard. I sat upright and I followed them towards the gas station.

No sooner had we come inside there into the front of that little market when we met this little black haired girl wrapped in a black windbreaker and with a concerned look upon her face. Once I lay eyes on her there by the cash register, to where she resembled a lost dog, she fixated on me and Lars in particular. I shuddered from her gaze and also the fact I had just been laying in wet grass a bit ago.

“The two of you must be my heroes right now,” she said to us in a broken voice.

Lars peered back at me.

“And... who are you?” he asked with a bit of reluctance.

“I'm Candace,” she answered, and I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. Of all the bullshit we went through just now, I had to laugh. I was the only one in there laughing, too.


	19. controller

“How—How are you even alive?” Lars could hardly talk to Candace at first.

She had led us outside to a bench underneath a protective roof: I offered to stand next to the two of them while they took to the stretch of cold metal. Angeline, Scott, Frankie, and Charlie were back in that little mini mart; Candace offered to talk to us outside given we were the ones who found her journal. I stood underneath the awning so I could feel the cool breeze on the back of my head but also stay out of the rain. Lars had gotten her a little white cup of water: I offered to find a pair of pants for her but she assured me she was fine.

“I've been living with friends,” she replied. “Friends that my family doesn't know about. They live off the grid so they were able to hide me since I planted my journal.”

She glanced up at me with this pensive look on her face.

“What are your names?” she asked us.

“I'm Joey,” I said to her, “and that's Lars.”

“So you guys found my journal,” she muttered.

“We're the Chosen Ones,” I joked, to which she giggled at me.

“I wouldn't call you that, though,” she pointed out. “You just happened to find my journal in the place where I wanted someone to find it.”

“So we're the Chosen Ones,” I said, nonplussed.

“Not necessarily,” she persisted as she took a sip of water.

“You know I knew your sister,” Lars changed the subject.

“I remember hearing her talk about a Danish boy and his lady a few times before,” she recalled to him. “I don't remember some of the things she'd say, but—I do remember hearing the Danish part, though.”

“Do you anything more about me?” he prodded her.

“Actually, yeah. She'd talk about you sometimes. She said things like—she—was it your wife?”

“Yes.”

“Maya would talk about her and how smart she is. She really wanted to get to know your wife better.”

She glanced up at me again.

“Were the two of you down underneath that transformer over there?” she asked me.

“Yeah, we were just down there,” I told her.

“I made the mistake of going down there, too,” she confessed. “It's a booby trap set up by our step-dad. The man's on a power trip right now.”

“Obviously,” Lars muttered. “So do you anything more about Maya and my—” He stifled another belch. “—my wife? Like, did you ever see them interact before you?”

“Yeah, your wife gave her something—a little piece of paper—did you guys see it when you found my journal?”

I shook my head.

“No, I don't remember seeing that,” Lars confessed.

“Maya never told me what it was—some kind of confidential nonsense—you know, something that we're not supposed to know and even though she was a robot, she feared losing me if she told me. She stored it in her database but she never gave me access to it. She did in fact give me a view into something that controls things like music and television.”

“It's funny, we had breakfast in Syracuse,” I told her, “and I wanted to put on music and I couldn't find any in the jukebox. Like there was none.”

“Really?” She raised her eyebrows at me.

“Yeah. It was weird.”

“Huh.” She dropped her gaze back to her cup and then she took another sip of water.

“Are you guys musicians?” she asked me with a peer back up at me.

“We're both drummers,” Lars answered.

“I'm a singer,” I added.

“Oh, Jesus,” she breathed out; she had this look on her face as if she was in trouble.

“What's the matter?” I asked her.

“If anything, those controls are going to own the two of you the most,” she explained. “Well, they're affecting anything and everything, but anybody who makes music or loves it will pay the price the most. It's going to completely take you guys as well as anybody who creates anything by force.”

“What are the controls like?” Lars asked her with his eyebrows knitted together.

“It's all meant to disrupt it,” she continued. “Anything and everything that's seen as vulnerable are going to be in trouble. But there's a flipside to it, though.”

“How so?”

“It all wants to clash with each other. People like the two of you want to go forth and do your thing while the machines want to hold you down and hold you back.”

“Well, yeah,” I said and I wanted to chuckle at that.

“But it's more than that, though,” she continued, “they want to make you one of them. Literally.”

“Literally?” I gaped at her, to which she nodded her head.

“I didn't know about it until just a couple of days ago, either. It's all going to take anybody who creates for a living by the scruff of the neck and completely take them over.”

“And all the regular—dare I say—Joes are gonna make a beeline to the front of the pack and be a bunch of regular Joes for the rest of their lives?” Then again, I was kind of rambling there.

“I can hope that,” Candace confessed. “I can hope that it's just isolated to someone like the two of you and not the regular people of New York state.”

“So how do we fight it?” Lars asked.

“Well, see, that's what I've been trying to figure out. How to save guys like you without getting either of us killed.”

She cleared her throat and stood to her feet.

“Would you guys excuse me for a moment?”

“Of course,” I told her.

“Yeah, sure,” Lars added with a shrug of his shoulders. Candace strode away from us and around the edge of the awning. I watched her double back to the mini mart; when I knew she was out of earshot, I turned to Lars.

“Sounds like she knew we were coming,” he told me. “Specifically us.”

“Think yer wife had sump'n to do with it?” I asked him as I stuffed my hands into my jacket pockets.

“That's not a bad guess.”

“You think this whole thing is getting too ridiculous for the both of us?” I asked him with a clearing of my throat.

“It could kill us, Joey,” Lars pointed out.

“And if it could kill, it could take a shit and die itself,” I insisted.

“Machines don't shit, Joey.”

“This one probably could. If it takes a shit, then the whole grand scheme of things will turn to shit with it. Associate cities blearing out and robotic girls crumbling at the seams with the sight of shit.”

He laughed at that, a genuine laugh.

“D'you like that?” I asked him with a chuckle.

“Yeah! That was a good one, I should write that down when we find a place where things are—you know—writeable.” He peered over his shoulder and his face lit up. “Oh, here she comes.”

Candace rounded the edge of the awning and my right side with that same white cup in hand. She had gotten a refill.

“Angeline was just telling me about you guys going to look for some person down in the City,” she started again as she took her seat next to Lars.

“Dan and Mrs. Hamilton,” he filled in.

“I don't know Dan,” she confessed. “But Mrs. Hamilton—Mrs. Hamilton, is she that older lady with a short bob of hair and sounds like she just came out of Amish country?”

“Yeah.” He knitted his eyebrows at her. “Wait—you know her?”

“Do I know her? I went to work for her. I was a stripper at Black Orchid. Not for very long, but I was there. I probably saw her all of twice, though.”

“What stopped you?” I asked her, mortified.

“The clientele told me I was too fat,” she replied. “I ended up leaving because the comments were getting to me. One of the strippers there—Cindy, was her name?”

“Oh, Cindy!” I declared.

“Yeah, she tried to help me. She tried to get me into a threesome with her and a guy she was giving a lap dance to, and he totally turned his nose up at me. He said I was too heavy for his cock. And I was like 'fine, I don't wanna sit on your sad little cock anyway.' Cindy refused his money, too. She and I still talk from time to time now.”

She frowned right then.

“What happened to Mrs. Hamilton?” she asked us.

“It's complicated,” I told her.

“Yeah, it's pretty long,” Lars added.

“Hey, if you guys found my journal, you should be able to tell me about what happened to her.”

I looked over at Lars right as he locked eyes with me.

“We were trying to get away from the headquarters at the _New York Times_ and—we ended up losing her down there,” Lars explained in a single breath. Candace gasped and brought a hand to her mouth.

“Yeah, we were like roaming around the place and then we bolted out of there,” I added. “Took her car and everything.”

“But—if you guys lost her, why are you looking for her?” She took a big drink from the water cup.

“Because she was helping us,” I replied.

“But you're seeking help from someone who's dead, though,” she pointed out.

“She's not dead,” Lars pointed out.

“Are you sure? You said you lost her.”

“That was shitty phrasing on my part,” he clarified.

“She could be dead, though,” I quipped.

“There is in fact that possibility,” Lars pointed out, exasperated. “But that's not what I said.”

“But what if she is?” asked Candace.

“Then we're just gonna haveta look for Danny,” I said with a bowing of my head.

“And if we find Danny, then what?” she asked me, to which I shrugged.

“We go from there,” Lars added.

“No, we go home,” I corrected him.

“You sure we go home, Joey?” He squinted one eye at me.

“Positive," I assured him; I really just wanted to get back into bed. "Unless Candace has a better idea of what needs to be done.”

“Well, you guys found my journal,” she reminded us, “—and I said whoever finds my journal has to stop what's going on here in New York.”

“And since you're alive,” Lars started.

“I'm alive and I'm with the two guys who found my journal,” she added.

“Joey wants to get his ass into a recording studio,” Scott said from behind us.

“Indeed, I do!” I confessed with a shrug; quite the sentiment hearing that from Scott no less.

“When things are figured out and settled, we'll find you a spot, Joseph,” Candace vowed with a sip of her water.

“That's Chief to you,” I pointed out as Frankie and Charlie strode up from behind me.

“Chief?” she giggled.

“Yeah.” I showed her a little lopsided grin.

“He's Native American,” Lars told her.

“On my mom's side," I added with a slight nod of my head to the side. "Iroquois. Meanwhile, my dad's Italian American.”

“That's probably why you're so handsome,” she teased me, much to Scott, Frankie, and Charlie's amusement. I raised an eyebrow at her.

“Alright, all you guys, let's get this show on the road!” Angeline proclaimed from behind us.

“Gonna be a full ride,” Charlie remarked.

“Goin' there on a full ride!” Scott cracked.

“Yeah, it's gonna be a loaded car,” Frankie added, “absolutely loaded with all of us.”

“Alright, we're gonna get loaded!” I declared which made Scott laugh and my shoulders feel a little lighter.


	20. marquee

I was in the front seat and with the kerchief around my face as we drove our way down to the City. I had to share a seat with Candace while Angeline took to the wheel once again. I felt a little reticent to even so much as brush the side of my thigh against the side of hers. For all I knew, she could've been a robot herself, but then again, it could have been all of the shit was going on around then. She nestled down in the seat next to me as if she was cold and yet it wasn't very cold in that car.

Because it drove up onto the sidewalk and bumped into a transformer, the side of the front bumper crumpled up and made a dent of sorts right next to my right foot and ankle: for three hours straight, I was having to sit with the side of my ass pressed against the door panel and my knees buckled so much I had them pressed to the front of the dashboard.

That poor car was so loaded down with all of us in there and yet it managed to get us all there. All three and a half hours there to the outskirts of the city. At least the heater still worked. But I knew the four of them weren't comfortable back there behind us, though. I didn't even have to look over my shoulder, right behind Candace and me to know what it looked like behind us there.

Night had fallen over the area at that point and even with the sky still lit up with the sun, the neon glowed at us like an evil eye.

Before I knew it, it was as bright as day when we reached the edge of the City itself. I sank down in my seat and brought a hand to my brow. Too bright. Too fucking bright.

“Jesus,” Angeline grumbled; through the bright blue and green all around us, I watched her tug the visor down.

“Holy shit,” Scott followed it up.

“I can't see,” she complained. “Shit—”

We were going to wreck the car again. I just knew it.

“—shit—where's the exit to Manhattan?”

I closed my eyes, and yet I could still see the neon.

“Where is it?” Angeline demanded. “Where is it!”

“Angeline,” said Candace.

“Not now, Candace,” she retorted.

“Angeline!”

“What!”

 _THUMP_.

Knew it.

But then it was followed up by something else. Grinding of metal. Grinding of metal and breaking of glass. I opened my eyes in time to see us sliding off of the freeway, which had lifted up and twisted off to the side: the shoulder had tipped down towards the streets below, meaning if we drove off, we'd go all the way off. Maybe that was what Candace wanted to point out?

“Angeline! Pull the brake!” Charlie shouted.

I held still with my ass, my thigh, and my knee pressed against the door panel and I hoped there wasn't something sharp on the other side of the door.

“Pull the fucking brake!” Frankie followed up.

“Pull the brake!” Charlie shouted again.

But she never did: instead, we went off with the shoulder of the road and hit the guard rail. I felt it in my hip but I braced myself the whole time. The side doors scraped against the guard rail to the point of it being deafening. Everything seemed to move about in slow motion. I bowed my head a bit and closed my eyes again because I knew the glass from the windows and the windshield would break up over Candace and me.

It happened in slow motion and yet before I knew it, it was over and we held still on the pavement.

I opened my eyes and glanced around the front of the car. Candace and Angeline had nestled down next to each other; I peered over my shoulder to Lars, Scott, Frankie, and Charlie huddled down in protection of themselves against the impact. My ears rang from the wall of noise around us; I lay a hand on Candace's shoulder to grab her attention.

“Candace?” I asked her; my own voice sounded as though it had detached from my own throat and threw itself from a mile away.

“Candace?” I repeated. “Candace!” My voice rang in my own ears. She lifted her head from Angeline's shoulder and looked up at me with a befuddled look on her face.

“Candace, do you hear me?” I asked her.

“Joey?” She sounded so far away.

“Candace, can you hear me?”

“Joey—Joey—” Her voice became clear and crisp. I was breathing hard and fast, and so was she.

“Joey, are you alright?”

Next thing I knew, my hip and thigh ached from the scraping of the doors against the rail. But I was alright otherwise. I was alive.

I craned back to the four of them: Lars lifted his head, and so did Scott. The latter looked past me and pointed out the windshield.

I turned my head and followed his gaze to the street lit up with nothing more than that creepy green and blue neon glow.

“Danny?” My voice broke. I recognized that feathery crown of hair atop his head, kissed by the bright neon lights all around us. “Danny!”

Angeline shoved her door open and clambered out of the car. I tried to do the same but the damn thing had sealed shut from the scraping. Charlie all but fell out of his seat and onto the pavement; Frankie and Lars followed. Candace was quick to slide out of the driver's side; Scott and I followed right behind them. It was hard for me given the parking lever right underneath the one hip that didn't ache. It also didn't help that my foot almost hooked onto the steering wheel and I almost fell ass over teakettle out of the car.

Sure made quite the entrance to New York City, didn't we?

“Where'd he go?” Scott demanded. I gathered myself and looked onward at the street ahead of us. Nothing there.

“Damn it!” I exclaimed and my voice echoed over the pavement.

“Okay, we've gotta find out what happened to both Mrs. Hamilton and Danny,” said Charlie.

“And how do you think we can do that?” Angeline asked him.

“Split up?” he suggested.

“Like the worst thing to do, man,” Frankie pointed out.

“We don't really much of a choice, though,” said Candace. “Three of us will look for Mrs. Hamilton, and four will look for Danny.”

“Or four for Mrs. Hamilton and three for Danny,” Scott pointed out.

“Scott, come with me,” Angeline commanded almost immediately.

“Why me?” In the neon, I could make out the sight of him raising those thick eyebrows at her.

“You're the diligent one,” she explained, “you and I can look for Danny.”

“I'll come along,” Frankie volunteered with a step forward.

“Which means the four of us'll look for Mrs. Hamilton,” Charlie concluded, and he adjusted the lapels on his jacket. “Alright then.”

“Meet back by the car?” Lars asked.

“Might as well,” Scott replied with a shrug. “There's an art gallery and a bar over there behind you guys—we'll have a drink later on.” He showed us a grin and then he, Frankie, and Angeline made their way down the street in search of Danny somewhere in the heart of the City. I had no idea what neighborhood we were in, much less if we were even close to the _New York Times_ building. But I turned around to see that art gallery and bar in question: it was two in one in a single brick building and lit up by little twinkling white neon lights.

“Alright, Charlie, so which way do we go?” asked Lars, who stifled another belch in his throat.

“Well, let's see—Mrs. Hamilton is a worker, right?” Charlie started. “I have no idea where we are.”

“As long as we're not at the corner of First and First, we'll probably be okay,” I joked.

“D'you know Frankie and me actually came to the corner of First and First one time?” he said to me.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, it was—right before you joined Anthrax, Joey, come to think of it. We were driving to L'Amours to practice and we reached First Street and Frankie goes, 'Charlie, look! We're at the corner of First and First!' Then again, we might've been smokin' a little too much weed that night.”

“You still found it, though,” Candace pointed out.

“Yeah, we did!”

He was cut off by a crashing of metal down the block. In the dim light, I noticed Candace and Lars looking back at me with looks of concern on their faces.

“What the hell was that?” Charlie said aloud. He darted down the street and the three of us followed: I caught up with him quick enough while Lars and Candace lagged behind us.

We ran blindly down the street towards what I thought was the street which would eventually take us all the way down to the heart of Manhattan and Montana Studios, but I couldn't really remember. At that point, my hips, my thigh, and my right knee were hurting me so much that it amazed me as to how I managed to outrun Charlie.

“Joe! Joey! Slow down!”

I skidded to a stop so he could catch up with me. Lucky for us, we were at the corner: Lars and Candace caught up with us, both of them out of breath. The former knitted his eyebrows together. I followed his gaze to the low brick building across the street. It looked like something straight out of the French Quarter in New Orleans.

“Is that a warehouse?” he asked as his voice broke and cracked.

“Never seen it before,” Charlie confessed. I turned my head to Candace, who yanked her coat closed over her chest and swallowed at the sight of it.

“What do you think?” I asked her.

“That's one of my stepfather's warehouses,” she replied. “That's all I know. I never saw what went down inside of them.”

“Let's have a look-see, shall we?” Charlie suggested.

“We shall,” I said.

The four of us crossed the street and padded towards the warehouse: the street was deserted and I wondered if it would rain like the cyberpunk setting all this proved to be. Charlie and I reached the cold steely front double doors first. Using the glow of the neon, I could tell there were no doorknobs on the outside. And yet Charlie managed to push the one in front of him open as if it was nothing.

“That was easy,” he remarked.

“Too easy,” I added and I had an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach right then.

“My stepfather's like that,” said Candace as she rustled her coat. “He tries to get inside your head, like he finds your weakness and he uses it against you to the point you want to die.”

“So it's a miracle that you are with us at the moment,” Lars remarked and I could see the alarmed expression on his face.

“Nah, if I wanted to kill myself I would climb to the top of his ego and jump to his IQ,” she grumbled. I led the way inside of the warehouse: I was met with a bright light overhead and a rickety wooden floor that creaked underneath my feet and a series of half collapsed benches before me. Beyond that stood a low padded wall.

I turned my head to the wall on the left. There were some ice skates hanging there. I thought back to when I played semi-pro hockey. My hip and my knee were both sore, but walking around and doing that bit of running helped me a bit.

“This looks more like an old hockey rink than a warehouse,” Lars remarked as he fixed his coat. There was another metallic crash in front of us, and that time, it was so loud that Lars and I lunged back from the benches.

Charlie turned back to us with a frightened expression on his face. He gestured for me to join him. Careful not to make the floor creak any more, I crept over to him and kept my head bowed low.

I hung there next to him and stared right into those large light brown eyes. I could hear a machine humming in front of us, on the other side of that wall.

I turned to Lars and Candace right behind us.

“Do not make a sound,” I whispered in a voice so soft I might as well have breathed it. I gestured for Charlie to follow me to the edge of the wall.

I peeked over the top first and he followed suit.

The ice had been stripped out of the rink and replaced with a glass floor. Underneath that was this big spiderweb of neon and wires. Big blocky computers lined the bottom of the wall underneath us. Scrap metal piled up the far side of the floor.

Every so often, the neon would blink, like it would go dark and then light up again. I spotted a plaque reading SYRACUSE on top of one of those computers.

But what disturbed me the most was the sight in the middle of the floor: a pair of tables, one with a dead girl in a hospital gown and another with the beginnings of a new robotic girl. The dead girl was missing the skin on her feet and lower legs and it looked as though they were about to remove some more from her face: even from a distance, I could make out the sight of pen lines around the circumference of her face. I lifted my gaze to the sight of something that looked like my dad's wood chipper right next to her.

Right next to that was a conveyor belt.

“I wonder,” I whispered to Charlie.

“Let me see,” Lars insisted and he peeked over the edge of the wall in between us.

“It looks like—” I began.

“They're skinning people and then throwing them into a meat grinder,” Charlie explained as he covered his mouth.

“We're getting replaced by robots now,” Lars added with a bit of a stutter and a rub of his stomach.

“What do you mean replaced?” I asked him.

“Robots like Maya will take our place. I just know it.”

“How would they take our place when we're at the top of the food chain?”

“It only makes sense, Joey.”

“Unplug life support then,” I quipped.

“Wait a minute, guys,” Charlie stopped us.

“What?” I asked him.

“Where's Candace?”

Lars and I turned around to find she had in fact disappeared.

“Oh, for fuck's sake,” I grumbled. I peered around the side wall of the rink. Nobody there. I doubled back towards the wall on the left, which I believed where the locker rooms were: maybe she hid out in there for some reason. I was about to reach the doorway when I felt something cold and metallic grip onto my throat. I looked to my left.

I recognized that black hair. That same face. That same face of a certain corpse.

Maya was choking me. Choking me. Of all people.

The man who found her.


	21. jesus needs more babies for his war machine

Her fingers were cold on the sides of my neck: as cold and frigid as ice. They pressed hard and tight up against my skin. I closed my eyes. My thoughts raced. I had nothing on my person to fight back.

I also grimaced at the very thought of hitting a girl.

 _Joe, she's not a real girl_ , said a voice inside of my head. _She's a fucking robot! A robot and a clone!_

 _Yeah, but I'd still be hitting a female_ , I insisted.

_And?_

_And?_

_So what? She's not fucking real!_

Right as that voice in my head said that, I had reached to my right for those ice skates on the wall. Whether or not those blades had the guards on, they would have to do. I held onto them tight.

I swung my arm over my head and clonked her right onto hers. I opened my eyes in time to see two things. The first thing was the blades did not have the guards on so I stabbed her in the head with the raw tips of blades. The second thing was the blades didn't look to be very sharp, so I not stabbed her in the head but I knocked her head clean off of her shoulders.

She let go of my neck and I breathed in as if I had been drowning. Her neck had splintered down onto my feet like a bunch of sawdust and her head fell onto the floor like an empty water jug. It rolled into the next room just like an empty water jug; meanwhile, her body staggered backwards and fell ass over teakettle onto the hard floor.

Charlie and Lars had moved to the other side of the rink in search of Candace. I hung the skates back up

Of course! Now it was time to figure out what had happened to Candace.

I doubled back into the next room, and all the while I stepped over the shards of artificial neck and then I picked up Maya's head for a better look at her. Her eyes had darkened to a solid black and her mouth gaped open by about a hair's breadth. It made me think of Medusa, and in particular Anthrax's song Medusa and one of the bands I played in before Anthrax, Medusa.

I rotated her head over for a look at the back. The roots reminded me of the fake hair on those old dolls I'd see in the girly section of toy stores when I was a little boy. Like a fusion of Pinocchio and Frankenstein.

But in the dim light, and as I took a closer look, I noticed something on the base of her head. The letters “M-A-Y-A” on a tiny placard: it might have been dim in that little room but not that dim to see that those letters represented an acronym.

“'Melancholy Activated Young Animatron,'” I read aloud. “'A friend to all, but enemy to trauma. Patented 1969.'”

I had this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. I raised my head to find where I had stumbled upon, or rather what I had stumbled upon. A huge dimly lit room filled with shelves of heads backlit by that same blue and green neon light from outside. Thousands and thousands of heads. All of them of a similar shape, like a woman's face. All of them blank and lifeless. If I didn't know better, I would've sworn they were all death masks.

I thought of what Charlie had proclaimed back there in that they were making human meatballs before they made the robots. Now I saw that that wasn't a bad guess.

I turned my head to the left at the head closest to my face. It looked as though there were bundles of wires making up the tissue, but then I looked closer to find that yes, the facial tissue was comprised of wires. Tiny little pearly white wires.

“Animatron,” I recalled. I lifted the head for another look at the placard, but then I turned it over for another look at the actual face. Aside from the fake skin, it was clear to me that these masks were the bases for this head.

“What the fuck did I just come across,” I muttered to myself.

I lifted my gaze to the next mask over. All of them identical. All of them bases. I had a pit in my stomach about all of this and the more I looked on at the heads, the more it sank down inside of me to the point of feeling like a dead weight.

A squeaking noise caught my ear. I turned around to find a door slamming shut behind me. I lunged for it but once I got to it, the click of a lock stopped me right in my tracks.

“Shit!” I shouted. I pounded on the door panel. “Shit! God damn it, let me out!”

I dropped Maya's head on the floor so I could try and force the door open. I might be a skinny little boy but I'm stronger than I look.

“Lars!” I shrieked as I pressed my shoulder against the door panel and jiggled the handle. “Lars! Charlie! CHARLIE!”

I froze. I turned my head to find those masks were practically sprouting legs and coming for me. The one I looked at jumped off of the shelf and landed on the floor: it looked like a giant cockroach. A giant pearly white cockroach with gaping black holes for eyes, a nose, and a mouth. I returned to the door.

“Let me the fuck out!” I yelled through the panel. “Let me the fuck out or I'll kick your rotten heads in! MOMMY!”

Silence. Silence on the other side. Silence makes me sick to my stomach, especially when I have scores of white cockroaches coming after my ass like high wire over handlebars.

“FIRE!” I shouted. “FIRE! FIRE! LIVE HARD DIE HARD! I'M GUNG HO! GUNG HO! GUNG HO!”

“Joey!” I had never felt more overjoyed to hear Charlie's voice.

“Charlie!” my voice broke.

“Joey!” The doorknob jiggled on the other side. “Joey, stand back! I'm gonna bust down the door!”

“I can't!”

“What?”

“I can't!” My throat tightened up like I had been singing hard for a whole two hours.

“Well, cover yer head and get out of the way!”

I lunged back towards the shelves and the masks followed me! But then the door busted right off of its hinges and landed flat on the masks right in front of it. Charlie stood tall and strong. He turned to me with a flustered look on his face.

“Joey—!” Charlie froze right in place and gaped at the sight of the masks on the floor. He almost burst out laughing at the sight of them. “Jesus—”

“That's why I couldn't hardly back up,” I explained.

“What the fuck is that.” He gestured to the round jar shaped thing in the middle of the horde.

Maya's head!

They crawled towards me like a shitload of bugs. I couldn't shake the image of cockroaches from my mind. Even Charlie backed up from them. There were hundreds of them. Hundreds upon hundreds, each and every one of them sending a slimy creepy feeling down my back.

I sank down to the floor and pressed my back against the wall. I closed my eyes when they crawled onto my legs and my arms.

But then they stopped.

“Joey?” Charlie said from the other side of the room.

I opened my eyes to find the ones cradling Maya's head right upon my thighs. Her face pointed out at me much like Medusa's face, but I noticed something inside of those blackened eyes, like a pair of black opals. And like a pair of black opals, they had this twinkle to them. This bluish fiery twinkle, that same shade of blue as the backlights and the neon outside. I was sure it was nothing more than a glitch or something like that, given I had literally whacked off her head with a pair of ice skates, but I recognized Mrs. Hamilton's bob of hair and I recognized someone, or something, grabbing her from behind her.

“Oh—” Her voice sounded so far away but I knew it was her. “Oh—Dan, help!”

It played again.

“Oh—Oh—Dan, help!”

Again.

“Oh—Oh—Dan, help!”

 _Again_.

“Oh—Oh—Dan, help!”

AGAIN.

“Oh—Oh—Dan, help!

“So you're tellin' us that we gotta save Mrs. Hamilton now?” I demanded to the masks, like they would answer me. They turned the head to the other side so I could behold another sight to see.

Short bob of blonde hair but a lot better put together. I gaped at the sight of a pair of arms grabbing her and yanking her back into the shadows.

“Angeline, too!”

“Shit,” Charlie muttered.

“Charlie! Joey!” Lars' voice floated into the room right then.

“Lars?” Charlie called back. Lars poked his head into the room right then; his face was twisted with concern. But then he saw the heads and snickered.

“I can explain,” I swore to him as the faces on my thighs backed off.

“What's up?” Charlie asked him.

“Candace might up to something,” he declared. “Something—nefarious. And—masky. Anyways, follow me.”

The masks backed off of me which allowed me to climb to my feet. I turned to Charlie and ran my fingers through my black curls.

“If she really is up to sump'n, I gotta say sump'n to her to show that we mean business,” I stated.

“Like an owning of sorts?”

“Yeah.”

“Hit me.”

“That's Injun to you, whore,” I said with my eyebrows knitted together. “How's that?”

“Perfect!” Charlie proclaimed as we hurried out of there.


	22. gravemaker

“Alright, Lars, what the hell's goin' on here,” I started as he led us to a narrow hallway of sorts. I couldn't hardly shake the image of those masks crawling over me like a shitload of bugs. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see them crawling over me. All over my legs and my stomach. The whole thing made my skin crawl and made it crawl so much that I had to rub my arms as if I was cold.

Lars meanwhile, gestured for me and Charlie to follow him closer to the end of the hallway. He stopped us in our tracks as we reached the doorway. He peeked around the corner of the door frame and then he gestured for us to join him. Before I could move in closer, he brought a finger to his lips.

I nodded and then I lingered behind him: I peered over the crown of his head into the room before us. Charlie stood behind me and peered over my shoulder.

It was kind of a big room, one loaded with bookshelves and a big heavy looking desk in the middle of the floor. I noticed Candace standing before the desk with the coat hanging around her body like a big heavy blanket.

“I can't take this for very much longer,” she said aloud.

She removed the coat from around her body and showed off to us. That coat hid the bare bones making up her body—and I mean, bare bones. She had hardly any flesh on her body, save for the spare skin covering her and some threadbare muscles on the backs of her legs. She was barren and hollow, even with her back to us; her hip bones had more curvature than the bone in a steak. She was so scrawny and thin, much thinner than me, and she hunched her back to the point of showing off her back ribs, as prominent as the rippling on a river bed; I even looked down at my own thighs and I felt full and heavy all of a sudden. I was a boy of flesh and substance compared to her. Her arms, as thin as the legs of the chair next to her, quivered and shook as she dropped the coat onto the back of the chair. Her spine jutted out from the skin on her back.

“The fuck?” Charlie breathed into my ear.

“Good Lord,” I mouthed.

“Sticks and stones will break my bones,” she muttered, “and I'm the stick to break the camel's back.”

She reached out for the book in front of her. Her hands shook as she flipped it open. She opened it to a page—I couldn't tell because her arm was in the way.

“This ends with me,” she said aloud. “I don't want to live in a world without my fellow human.”

I glanced back at Charlie, who looked so pale, like he had just seen a ghost.

“No words... no music... no nothing... no Candace...”

She rested a knobby hand on that sunken stomach of hers and groaned in her throat.

“You'll never get me,” she vowed. There was the sound of tearing paper, followed by crumpling.

“What the fuck is she doin',” I whispered. She stuffed some pages of the book into her mouth: her gaunt cheeks filled out as she stuffed more paper into her mouth.

“I'll never be a part of this brave new world you so desperately want,” she proclaimed with her mouth full. Candace almost gagged on the paper; the sight of it made my stomach turn. Lars turned away with his eyebrows raised and his eyes wide open.

“What the fuck?” Charlie demanded in a hushed whisper.

“Yeah, Lars, what gives?” I asked in a soft enough voice so they could hear me.

“You'll never get me,” Candace repeated in between bites of paper. “You'll never fucking get me! Just—” She stuffed more paper into her mouth. “—just fucking try me! Try and get me!”

“I thought she was up to something a little more—” Lars shook his head about and brought his hands to his stomach.

“Nefarious?” I filled in as we heard more and more tearing and tearing of paper. I folded my arms over my chest.

“Yes,” he answered.

“You won't get it, you fucking bastard,” she continued, “—just try and—get this skinny—skinny ass—skinny everything!”

“Well, maybe she's intentionally—I dunno—starving herself and eating paper because—I don't know—”

“She doesn't wanna see the awful shit?” Charlie chided.

“But... why, though?” Lars asked.

“'Cause it's awful?” But then again, I had nothing.

“But why that would be so nefarious, though?” Lars wondered aloud.

“Eat—my—fucking—skinny—ass—cunt—you cunt ass little son of a bitch blown out babboon ass bastard—”

“Well, think about it—if they're grinding up humans and making a slurry outta 'em,” Charlie figured. “Like a fusion of man and machine, then surely alla this has to fit into that somehow.”

“—stinkin' bastard ASS! Ass cunt! Bitch ass cunt!”

“Right, and then there's the whole thing with Mrs. Hamilton and Angeline, too,” I pointed out.

“Wonder what they would have to do with it,” Lars' voice trailed off.

“—you'll have to—kill my ass—first—stinkin' ass! Stinkin' cunt that stinks like the sewers of New York City!”

“Good question,” I confessed.

“Might wanna grab those skates you found earlier, Joey,” Charlie pointed out.

“Good idea!” I whispered with a wag of my finger.

“—oh, God, oh shit—I'm freezing—I'm gonna die—I'm dead—I'm dead—”

“Huh?” Lars turned his head.

 _THUD_.

He returned to us with a worried look on his face.

“What the hell was that?” I demanded.

“Shit!” Charlie whispered, and the three of us made our way into the room without maybe thinking that Candace dropped the book on the floor or something. But then again, she lay there on the floor, emeciated and far more bare bones than me. Her mouth was crammed full with paper and she had swallowed so much of it that her gaunt belly swelled with it.

She had killed herself eating nothing but paper and cursing like a sailor. She lay there as hollow and lifeless as a log and with spare shreds of paper strewn over her chest.

“Her coat!” Lars declared. He picked through the pockets of her coat, which still hung there on the back of the chair. Meanwhile, Charlie and I stood over Candace's corpse and looked on at her like she was going to get up.

“Wonder what that was all about,” he wondered aloud.

“I dunno... why paper of all things?” I pressed my hands to my hips. I examined her mouth, which was lined with all that crumpled paper as if her starved body overflowed with it.

“She kept 'you ass', too,” I recalled. “Maybe she was vowing some kinda revenge or sump'n?”

Charlie shook his head and shrugged. “Hard to say.”

“'You'll never get me,'” I recalled again. “She was hiding under the radar, away from the increase in industry.”

“'No writing, no music,'” Charlie joined in with me.

“Guys,” Lars caught our attention: he was holding a little piece of lined paper, although after the sight here, I didn't think I would want to see little pieces of paper for a little while.

“What's it say?” Charlie asked him.

“'Remember the last, Ulrich,'” he read aloud. “In Candace's handwriting, too.”

“The last Ulrich?” I asked him. “You?”

“No, 'the last, Ulrich,' as if addressing me,” he corrected.

“The last what?” I asked him.

“No idea,” he confessed as he turned it over to read the back. “Nothing on the back, either.”

“What are you dicks doing in here!”

The three of us whirled around to find a young lady wrapped in light scrubs like she was some kind of nurse. I opened my mouth to say something, but no sound came out. I looked down at Candace's corpse, crammed full of paper, and then I looked up at Charlie, who's face was pale again, and then I looked over at the book on the desk, which was ripped apart and sprawled open, and then there was Lars with her coat in his arms. This looked so bad.

“It's not what it looks like.” Lars himself took the words right out of my mouth.

“Well, you're not supposed to be in here given you're civilians,” she scolded us.

“We were just leaving anyways,” Charlie promised her.

“I'll take care of her, you thick dicks,” she scoffed. Rude.

The three of us hurried out of the room: Lars had Candace's coat slung over his shoulder. Charlie and I led him out of the hallway and towards the front room. The machine hum had fallen away and we were met with complete silence. I peered down into the rink part of the room to find the dead girl down there was still laying there.

I had a weird feeling about the whole thing. I swiped the ice skates from the hook on the wall before we headed out of there and into the dark night. A light drizzle fell upon our heads as we congregated on the sidewalk out there. Panting hard, I turned to Charlie who ran his fingers through his dark hair.

Lars belched so loud that it echoed over the pavement in front of us.

“Jeez, dude,” I told him.

“Yeah, I know,” he grumbled as he rubbed that belly of his.

“Did she seriously call us dicks,” Charlie wondered aloud.

“We are dicks, though,” I pointed out. “Three dicks who use our dicks to uncover the dicks doing this dick kinda shit.”

“For a second, I thought you were going to say three dicks from New York,” Lars confessed.

“Well, he and I are,” I gestured back to Charlie.

“I'm a dick from Denmark!” Lars declared.

“Well, I dunno 'bout that,” I told him with a shrug of my shoulders.

“What're you saying?” He lowered his eyebrows and folded his arms over his chest.

“Well, you've been helpful as all fuck, Lars. You're far from being a dick.”

“Far from the snot end of my own dick, I presume?”

“—yes!”

“Anyways, there's Scott.” Charlie pointed in front of us. I turned to find Scott and Frankie running towards us from down the street.

“There you guys are!” Frankie called out. “We've been looking all over for you guys.”

“Mrs. Hamilton and Angeline are in trouble, we know!” I declared.

“The hell they are, but we know where to find 'em!” Scott replied and he gestured for us to follow him down the block to the heart of the City, and back where we came in. “Come on!”

“Where's Candace?” Frankie asked us, and the three of us looked at each other.

“You don't wanna know,” Charlie promised him.

“But I do!”

“You really don't, Frankie,” I added.

“Come onnnn.”

“Let's just say she made her own grave,” Lars quipped as he strode past him to catch up with Scott.


	23. the butcher

I kept close to Lars and Scott as we all made our way back into the City. The entire skyline was lit up by that bright, unnatural blue and green neon light: I thought about that lucid dream I had had, where I had been relegated to living on the street.

Everything was about to be destroyed all for the sake of bringing it all forward. It made no sense to me. If there was any sort of sense to it, then I couldn't see the point. All that made us us had numbered days and we had to do something about it. I was sure that if we found Angeline and Mrs. Hamilton, there would emerge... you know, some kind of break in the case.

But even as we made our way down the deserted street, and I could smell the cold metal and the grease and the beckoning rain before us, I had this odd feeling within me, like something terrible was going to happen to us. I couldn’t exactly explain it, either, but I felt it. We were walking right into a trap, but I couldn’t fully explain it. I could only wonder what it could be with us, right there in the shadows before us.

I tucked my hands into my coat pockets to protect them from the cold. My fingertips fondled the soft interior of the pocket and Cindy entered my mind right then. I thought about the little game of strip chess she wanted to play with us. The thought of her next to me, stripped down to her little lace panties and about a single stroke of a rook away from wearing nothing at all. There was nothing more I wanted right then than to cuddle in my own bed with something soft right next to me. I just wanted to eat something tasty, put on a night shirt, and then go back to bed. Rest and nourish my body before I do anything remarkable.

Find Mrs. Hamilton and Angeline, and then get something to eat and then go back to bed.

Find Mrs. Hamilton and Angeline, figure out what Candace was trying to tell us and fix it, and _then_ get something to eat and then go back to bed. That’s it!

I lingered close to Lars and we padded onto the sidewalk in unison. Scott and Frankie walked before us while Charlie stayed behind us. Where we were going was beyond me. Where Angeline and Mrs. Hamilton could be hiding out in Manhattan was beyond me.

I thought about Danny, too, like where he could’ve gone off to there in the heart of the city. His skin was bathed in that bright neon light and he had a frightened look on his face, like he had seen some truly horrific things. Or maybe he had seen some really amazing things but saw us as something awful. Or maybe—

I kept flashing back on Cindy, too, the thought of fucking her again. The thought of her fucking me. The thought of her using her queen piece as a dildo. The thought of me using the king piece as a flesh light and singing “A Skeleton in the Closet” into her ear. I was so fixated on the thought of her fucking me silly that Scott’s voice and big fat Queens accent cut through me like a knife. It helped that we weren’t walking any further up this sidewalk.

“Joey! You payin’ attention?”

“Huh? Yeah? Yeah.”

“Right.” He showed me a grin and a slight raise of the eyebrows. No sooner did he do that than his expression turned thoughtful. “I just wanna say that it’s good to have you with us again, and I really mean that, too. I hope there’s no negative feelings here.”

I shook my head.

“Not at all, Scott,” I swore to him. “I don’t hold grudges.”

“Frankie suggested this to me,” he continued. “I guess I was just foolish to let ya loose like I did.”

“I wanna second this, too,” Charlie joined in from behind Lars and me. He set a hand on my shoulder. “Believe me when I say this, too—I didn’t wanna make that call to you.”

“He really didn’t,” Frankie added as he smoothed the hair atop his head. “I was there, Joe. Charlie had this sick look on his face like he was performing euthanasia on his pet.”

I glanced about at the three of them. I was stunned, but I was also relieved by all of this. It wasn’t even a few days ago the door slammed on my face and I had been left to my own devices. Maybe it was losing the studio in the fire and losing their belongings, losing everything, that made them realize something about me. Lose everything to see what meant the most in life.  
Maybe. I don’t know.

Irregardless of what I thought, I showed the three of them a knowing smile. It was as if a dead weight had been lifted from my shoulders. But I looked over at Lars, who had tucked his hands into his pockets and stared off to the side. Metallica let him out in the cold, too. But I had to keep myself fixated on them, though.

“When we meet up with John again, I’ll tell ‘em what’s goin’ on,” Scott promised me. “The last conversation we had before everything went to shit was he wanted you to be back in it.”

I gaped at him.

“Really?”

“Yeah, he said you’re the guy for us no matter what happens or something like that. So I’m sure he’ll understand.”

Right as he said that, I felt a shock on the inside of my wrist. That same shock I felt in Syracuse. That same shock I felt when we lifted Maya around. Frankie widened his eyes at the sight of me shaking my hand about.

“You alright?”

“You okay?” Scott joined in.

Another shock.

“Ow!”

“What’s wrong?” Lars asked me.

“I’m a radio tower, that’s what,” I said as another short shock shot up my arm. I showed them my flat metal bracelet right as a little glimmer of light sparked on the top. Another shock shot up from the inside.

“Ow! Ouch! God dammit!”

Lars and Frankie glanced up at the skyline behind us. In fact, there was a radio tower right there behind us and it sent out a bright flash of bluish greenish light every so often. It was that light that sent a shock up my wrist every so often and with each and every one, the more it hurt like hell.

“Ow! OW! FUCK!”

I couldn’t take it anymore. I finally yanked the thing off of my wrist. I held it in my fingertips and it didn’t shock me there. I stared at my wrist, at the bare skin there. No marks. No blemishes. Just the smooth skin which had been tenderized by the shocks.

I stuffed the bracelet into my coat pocket and cradled my wrist with my other hand.

“I think there might be something here,” Scott declared.

“Shall we take a look?” asked Lars as he stifled another belch with a clasp of his hand to his lips.

“It’ll get us outta this cold-ass wind,” I told him as I rubbed my wrist. The five of us made our way to the front door of the radio tower. Another flash of that light: I had the bracelet in my pocket but it made no shock through the fabric of the coat’s interior at me. That was just weird.

Scott stepped through the front door first, and I could only wonder who would leave something like this open for just anyone to walk right in for themselves. Charlie shut the door behind Lars and me and all of a sudden, I could think with some clarity. Scott and Lars walked towards the other side of the room, while Frankie, Charlie, and I examined that front room. I was unsure of what we could be looking for, but then I glanced about the room we had walked into: there was a control panel on the side of the room that resembled the control panel in any kind of recording studio, complete with the volume controls and whatnot. But there was nothing behind it. No sound-proof room.

Nothing that could signify the place was even hooked up.

Frankie knelt down on the floor before the panel in search of something.

“Frankie! Joey!” Charlie called out to us from the right side of the room. I looked over at him standing before a pile of what resembled wire coat hangers.

“The hell?” I wondered aloud. He picked one up to show me some kind of reddish threads danging off of the bottom wire.

“What is that, Charlie?” Frankie asked him.

“I have no clue,” he confessed.

“Hey, three bambinos!” Scott called from the door on the other side of the room. “Come check this shit out!”

Charlie set the hanger down on the pile and the three of us padded over to that doorway. I could smell blood behind him. That iron stench that made me think of a butcher block. But there was something else to it. That wasn’t animal meat.

He and Lars had found a catwalk of sorts overlooking a vast room. Frankie coughed and covered his mouth with the back of his hand. I grimaced at that awful smell. Charlie waved a hand before his face.

“Jesus,” he muttered.

“Yeah, that’s just rank,” Lars added with a wrinkling of his little nose. But he didn’t look too disgusted, though.

“Look down there, if you guys can, though,” Scott pointed down to the middle of the floor. Piles of meat and what looked like human skin over the whole place. It all looked so old and tired even from up there on the catwalk. Right smack in the middle of the floor stood what looked like one of those old metal radiators. The pipes led up to the ceiling and what I believed to be the radio tower itself.

“So this is probably where they're slicin' people up and puttin' 'em in a slurry,” Charlie remarked.

“Meat suits made of meat...” My voice trailed off. But there was that thing in the middle of the room. It looked like a furnace to me. I finally put my coat collar over my nose and mouth because I couldn’t take it. My bandana was in my other pocket but I didn’t feel like taking it out right then.

“Disposing of human flesh when it can’t fit in with the technological aspect,” Lars figured. His eyes darted about the floor before us. “Of course!”

“Of course what?” asked Scott.

“Anything that is human is deemed useless or not,” Lars continued. “If it isn’t, it’s brought here! No one knows anything about it because it all goes down in nondescript buildings such as this. It’s all so insidious and so innocuous looking that it’s hard to believe any cries for help.”

“And that included Candace,” Charlie added.

“Useless or not,” Scott frowned at that.

“It’s mostly people like us down there,” Lars pointed out. “I look on the far side of the room and I see shit like instruments and whatnot over there. Which means we’re probably next here.”

“And so they just let it all happen,” I concluded in a low voice.

“We're doomed,” said Scott and his voice echoed off the walls of the floor before us.

“Doomed from the start, if I do say so myself,” Lars grumbled.

Something caught my ear. I took a glimpse to the left. Three of those masks crawled on the wall on the far side of the room. They had followed us here.

“Fuck!” I shouted. The four of them turned in that direction as more of them crowded over the catwalk before us. I took out my bandana and put it back around my nose and mouth with haste.

“Jesus!” Charlie yelped.

Lars and Scott darted in the other direction. I hoped they would go back the way we came but they didn’t. Frankie, Charlie, and I followed them to a narrow set of stairs as more of those masks appeared out of the woodwork.

“Fuck the fuck off!” I shrieked. The five of us ran onto the floor, past the carnage and the corpses, and around the furnace looking thing. I recognized that bob of blonde hair as it emerged from behind a notch in the wall.

“Angeline!” I called out. She gaped at us. My eyes began to water, not just from the sight of her but the noxious smell of the human flesh and corpses around us. Dancing all around us like a ballroom in a state of euphoria.

“Angeline!” Scott echoed me as the five of us ran towards her.

“Angeline! Angeline!” I called out again.

“Joey!” she replied. There was an electrical shock from behind us and the five of us leapt forward so as to avoid it. Next thing I knew I was ass over teakettle right in between Scott and Charlie. Even though I was upside down, I could see nothing on the other side of the room other than a conveyor belt and some more wiring. Not musical instruments or the like, like what Lars said.

Even in the split second of a car crash, I started to wonder about Lars himself.

We landed on the floor, hard, on our backs. I glanced up to find Angeline had gone.

“Damn it!” I said.

“Where’d she go?” Scott demanded with a grunt of pain.

“Never mind that shit, though!” Lars proclaimed. More of those white masks crawled towards us from along the wall. But we lay there before a notch in the wall and potentially a doorway.


	24. blood soaked hero

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _“I'm on my way, I'm on my way,  
>  I'm on my way to eat your skin! :D”_  
> -asdfmovie 12

I was the first to climb up to my feet. My heart hammered away inside of my ears. The foul smell of the room behind us fell away from me. And yet, everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. Like that split second just prior to a car accident where the whole realm of existence seemed to grind to a halt and I was moving through solid earth.

All I knew was I was running. I was running. I was running from the killers. From the sharp objects. From the thieves. From the nothing.

Angeline had disappeared but all I cared about right then was getting the hell out of there. Getting away from there.

Either my sense of hearing had gone away from the inside of my skull or things really had slowed down a great deal.

I focused on the doorway in front of me. I thought it would slip away from me so I ran even with the dead weight dragging me down.

Getting out of there only mattered to me. If I had to put up a wall behind me to keep them all from getting me and taking my skin or whatever else. It felt like I was floating. Running on clouds out of there into the cold night outside.

I kept running down the street. I had no idea where I was going. I didn't care, either. I was a hockey player and therefore it could take hell and high water to keep me from running a mile down the street.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something next to me.

Frankie's bangs fluttered about as he ran parallel to me. I turned my head to my right at the sight of Charlie next to me, too. And next to him was Scott.

Where was Lars.

Oh, fucking shit on a fat cannoli.

Where's Lars.

But I kept running. I kept running with my band mates, my buddies... the guys who let me go only to bring me back again to show how much they really needed me. They were nothing without me. They couldn't go anywhere without me. I was the nail in their shoe. The shoes that pounded on the pavement underneath as we ran the fuck away from there as fast as we could.

The four of us charged into the neon darkness. Suddenly shit was loud. My chest felt as though it would explode from either my heart or lungs and then I would really be in trouble with the people making these... things.

I recognized Mrs. Hamilton's car, still posted up there on the collapsed pavement. I hoped it would still run as we reached it. Frankie slid over the hood while I took to the passenger side. Scott and Charlie dove into the back seat. I shut the door and the window pane fell out onto the pavement and shattered into a million pieces.

“Where are the keys?” Frankie demanded in a broken voice.

“You're asking me?” I said, out of breath. “I have no idea!”

Charlie gasped.

“LOOK!”

Frankie and I raised our heads for a look out the windshield. It was a quiet enough moment for my mind to slow down and for my breathing to steady out, but it wasn't long enough for me to actually catch my breath, especially when we spotted what was out there on the rubble.

Maya, or one of her copies rather, knelt down on the pavement over a silhouette shaped like a human. The light was too dim so it wasn't like I could see the person's face or body, but the sight of her hunched over them and her head burrowed into the chest cavity was all I needed to know right then. Frankie huffed and panted, and I did, too. Not just from running but from the sight before us.

She tasted blood from her being made in the factory and... she wanted more.

“SHE'S GONNA EAT THE FUCKING SKIN!” That had to have been the one time I ever really heard Scott raise his voice and not on stage. I wriggled the tip of my finger inside of my ear.

“She's not gonna eat the fucking skin!” Charlie insisted as his voice tightened up.

“The fucking skin!” I had to stifle a laugh at that.

“Yes, that's the fucking skin! She's fucking gonna eat it!”

“She's not gonna eat it—” Charlie continued.

“She's gonna—!”

BLEEP.

The little black box on the dashboard made a noise that stopped the both of them in their tracks and caught me and Frankie offguard.

“The radar detector,” I muttered. I had completely forgotten about it. I had a good feeling about it but I didn't like it sitting there on the dashboard.

“Frankie, take it out,” I said once I cleared my throat.

“Gladly!” He yanked the radar detector out of the space and chucked it out my window. I knitted my eyebrows at him.

“Take it out of that spot,” I corrected myself. “So it do'n't fall off while we're hobblin' along—”

“Ow!” Lars yelled out from outside.

The four of us peered out the right side to find him clutching his head and running towards us.

“Y'alright?” Scott called out.

“No! Something fucking hit me in the head!”

“Lars! Pick it up!” I shouted.

“Pick it up!” Charlie followed out my window.

“Huh?”

“Pick it up!” I shouted. “Pick it up! That's the radar detector! Pick it up!”

“Oh, shit!”

He stooped down to pick up the radar detector and carnivorous Maya must've heard him because she raised her head at him. Her eyes glowed like fiery hot embers. She tasted blood and she wanted more.

“Oh, jeez,” Frankie groaned.

“Shit!” My voice was almost gone, a rarity for me.

Lars made a noise that sounded like he just got kicked in the crotch and darted to my side of the car with the radar detector in hand. He dove right into the open window, right onto my chest. I got a mouthful of Lars hair and he almost got stuck.

“Come on—come on—” I chided as he crawled over my chest and my lap onto the center console.

“Frankie, start the car!” Charlie barked.

“I dunno where the keys are, Char!”

“Keys are HERE!” Lars handed him the keys from underneath the center console. How they ended up there was none of my business. Frankie stuck the keys into the ignition as Lars just about kicked the two of us in the head. He landed ass over teakettle in the backseat right in between Charlie and Scott.

The car shuddered and shook from the impact of the two accidents we had had. It was in bad shape. But Frankie pinched his eyes closed. I peered into the rear view mirror at the sight of Lars' feet sticking up from in between Scott and Charlie. I directed my attention from them and stared straight ahead to Maya as she lunged for us.

I closed my eyes. I didn't want to die. I didn't want to die right then, either, by getting eaten by a psycho powered robot made of mishmash human meat or something like that NO FUCKING WAY! The engine quivered and quaked but by some miracle it shuddered to life. I opened my life and I turned my head to Frankie, whose eyes twinkled and face riddled with determination.

“Manhattan?” he asked me.

“Like guardin' a drink—hit it,” I commanded. Without another word, Frankie put the pedal to the medal and the car roared forward. And hit Maya right square in the belly. She broke apart like she was made of popsicle sticks and fake blood. Even though the window was open, the shower of blood and viscera missed me and spilled out over the pavement outside.

“Jesus,” I sputtered as I cleared my throat again.

“Damn,” Charlie remarked. Frankie ran over the corpse but the person was already dead. He turned on the windshield wipers which helped a little bit: they gave him a clean spot big enough for him to drive, and there was an opening on my side about the size of my fist, but I was better off looking out that gaping hole to my right and feeling the cold wind on my face. The outside of the glass was stained by the blood. It needed to be washed away good and nice and nice and good with rain water or something.

BLEEP.

“Good God,” Lars remarked.

“Yeah, it's loud, isn't it?” said Scott.

“Is it on?” I asked him with a glimpse in the rear view mirror.

“Not sure—” I heard him fiddling with it. He pressed a button, and then two. I was more fixated on the road in front of us; I wanted to see for myself if the studio had in fact burned down.

“God, I can't get that smell out of my nose,” Frankie declared as he leaned back in the seat.

“That smell in that warehouse?” I asked him.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, me, neither—” The adrenaline was wearing off and thus I could focus and think straight again. I could also smell what he was talking about, too. It was one of those smells that needed to be ousted with something pungent like a lemon otherwise it'd haunt you forever. Gross.

I thought about Angeline and where she could have ran off to in there. After we found Mrs. Hamilton and Danny, we had to go back to find her again. Go back into the meat hole.

I also thought about what Lars had said there on the catwalk. I didn't see what he was talking about.

I had already gotten alone with him for a serious question—I wondered if I would have to do it again because... just... how did he know that? And why wasn't what he talked about there? Why weren't these guys talking about what he was talking about? It made no sense to me.

Frankie hung a left after a blinking stoplight. The car sputtered and coughed again, but kept going. The streets of the city were deserted, far more deserted than what I was used to seeing in all my trips down this way. I also noticed something else about the neon lights there, too: they seemed to grow dimmer with each passing block. Dimmer and more concentrated as we approached the heart of Manhattan.

Charlie noticed it, too.

“What the hell?”

“Yeah, what gives?” Frankie joined in; in the dim light, I could make out his knitted eyebrows and widened eyes. We pulled up to another stoplight. I looked out the gaping window at several of them over the outside of a pizza parlor and I made out the sight of what looked like cobwebs on the outside of the lights. But they weren't cobwebs—too thick and fleshy.

Fleshy.

“We gotta be comin' to some skeletons here soon, gentlemen,” Scott proclaimed in a broken voice.

“Oh, wait, there it is,” Frankie gestured out of the bloody windshield. I looked through my clear spot to total darkness. I had to wait until we climbed out of the car for me to see it myself. Indeed, we pulled up to the curb and he killed the engine, and I climbed out first. I stared into the blank empty lot about the size of a hockey rink that had been left blackened and completely devoid of anything. The fire had destroyed everything and even tarnished the buildings on either side of the property a bit.

Everything but the little kid in the far corner.

“Hey,” Frankie called out as he climbed out of the driver's seat.

Even with the dim light around us, I recognized the shape of her head. It was Maya. Or at least another clone of her. I didn't want to come close to her, especially after we had seen back there. But Lars didn't hesitate: he hurried across the empty lot towards her, still with the radar detector in hand.

“Lars, no!” Scott called after him. But he didn't listen. I watched him kneel down before her. I couldn't hear him—I wished I could hear him.

Frankie glanced back at me with his eyes still wide. I shrugged at him.

“Guys,” Lars called back to us.

The four of us were silent.

“It's okay. Come here.”

I swallowed before I rounded the front of the car; I passed a pile of that sinewy webby looking flesh shit which had stacked upon part of the curb and it smelled like lemons. I strode across the blackened dirt towards him and her, and I had this little pit form in my stomach as I came closer. I reached Lars, who held the radar detector before him: he had figured out how to switch it on because the lights glimmered and moved in a steady rhythm. Maya was giving off radar, even with her face hidden part of the way by her hands.

I crouched down next to him for a look into her face, that pallid face that slipped on with such ease and returned as a cockroach once removed. I wanted to ask her something, but my mind had gone blank. I had too many questions at that point.

“Candace—” I heard her breathe out.

I swallowed again. I was so thirsty.

“I am sorry to say that—darling Candace did not make it,” Lars informed her as the lights on the radar detector shifted and changed colors.

“We—We don't want to hurt you,” she confessed to me in a near whisper; her British accent was unmistakable. “We want to serve, especially when our time expires.”

“When does your time expire?” I asked her in a gentle voice.

“Twenty four hours after we are made. We're supposed to live longer than such, but—”

“But what?”

“We—”  
“Yeah?” I raised my eyebrows at her. She didn't reply. Instead blood trickled out of her eyes and ears. Either she was going to die right there in front of us or—

The radar detector stopped and then it made a soft beeping noise.

“The hell?” I wondered aloud.

“It's going haywire,” Lars pointed out. I watched Maya shake her head about. She clasped her hands to her ears and more blood trickled out from behind her palms. She whimpered in pain and scrambled to her feet.

“Hey, where you goin'?” Charlie called after her. She sprinted across the lot and back to the street. She bowed her head and made a noise that didn't sound human. I could only assume she was going by the way of the clone back there. I turned my head back to the three of them as they approached us from behind. I recognized the _New York Times_ building across the street from us. Mrs. Hamilton was probably in there somewhere.

“We've gotta get on this, fellas,” said Scott.


	25. goliath

“Okay, so the robots have a lifespan of about a day,” Charlie was saying as we made our way to the front steps of the _New York Times_. “And then I guess they die?”

“They malfunction and then die,” Lars corrected him as he held the door for the four of us; I strode past a rather large pile of fleshy cobwebs clinging to the banister and I jerked my hand back towards as though I had been burned. I walked into the front lobby first.

“At least, that's what I could figure out from Maya there. They malfunction in a wide variety of ways, I would think, too...” His voice trailed off as we all made our way inside of the front lobby.

The first thing I noticed was the fact that some of the lights had burned out on the ceiling over our heads: there was one near the entrance of the front hallway flickering a little bit like a signaling light. I lowered my gaze to the hallway itself: there was some kind of black mud sludge shit all over the carpet near the end. I had an odd feeling in the pit of my stomach, like something horrible had happened here.

Scott sniffled the air.

“You guys smell that?” he asked us.

“Smell what?” said Frankie.

Scott sniffled again.

“Perfume. Either Angeline or Mrs. Hamilton are here.” He strode past me as if he was about to head on down the hallway, to the nasty crap there on the carpet. That nose was going as if he were a blood hound. I looked over at Lars, who had raised a single eyebrow in question at the whole thing. I returned to Scott in time to find him gesturing for us to follow him down the hallway. I swallowed and took one step forward. Lars stepped up next to me, which meant Frankie and Charlie were right there behind us.

I lingered right behind Scott as we headed into the hallway. Despite that weird shit on the carpet up ahead, I could in fact smell the perfume even stronger. I thought about Black Orchid and how Mrs. Hamilton smelled so good even from working behind the bar. I also thought about Angeline and how she always smelled good, even when she took us out to eat. Since I was always hungry, I could always pick up something like that, like the filthy dog that I am.

But here, it was like facing on Goliath. Facing Goliath head on at the stake, or about to anyways.

We reached the sludge shit on the floor and Scott started to cough.

“What the fuck is that,” Charlie wondered aloud.

“No idea,” Lars answered as he, too, began to cough. “Jesus—”

I couldn't smell anything but it felt like something was choking me, like someone had set their hand on my neck and began squeezing the blood vessels on either side there. It also made my eyes water a bit.

“Gross,” Frankie complained.

“Yeah, that's pretty rank—” Lars added; Scott almost broke into a run right then. I followed him into the next corridor away from the shit on the floor and into shadows. The five of us hurried through the dim light and towards what I presumed to be in the direction of Angeline's office. I couldn't recall where it was in that building.

Scott then skidded to a stop and I just about ran into his back, but Lars ran into mine, which was then followed by Frankie and then Charlie. We would've been like a whole row of dominoes had I not steadied myself with those strong muscles in my ankles.

“Holy shit,” Scott muttered.

“What is it?” I asked him as I struggled to hold the three of them behind me.

He pointed straight ahead to the room before us.

I gasped at the sight before us. It must have been a coincidence. It must have been what we were looking for up to that point. But I knew it when I saw it, especially when I flashed back on the warehouse on the other side of town and I thought about Candace's screams as she choked on all that paper.

It had posted up in that room there before us.

I knew it when I saw it with all the trappings.

All the flesh and blood in the world, like a painting for us to behold with our very own eyes, there up on a small platform and with nothing more than a ramp leading down to the floor before us. She stood there like a mannequin waiting to be clothed so she could be put up on display. There was a gaping hole in her head as she awaited her new face to be put on like a face full of make up. Even in the dim light, I could make out the sight of muscles on the inside of the head: tiny little glimmers of light emerged from the inside there. She was made of flesh and blood as well as machinery. And yet her body looked young enough to be able to put on her own socks.

“Christ Almighty,” I whispered as one of those death masks made a beeline onto her face. She was being made right before us.

We were watching a girl being groomed and made for us to do whatever the fuck we wanted with. A girl named Maya. Yet another girl named Maya.

And then the heavy white metal door slammed behind Charlie. The five of us whirled around, but it was useless. We were stuck there as Charlie himself found out.

“It's locked!”

I had a sinking feeling in my chest. I turned around to witness her coming to fruition there on the platform with her arms stretched out before her like something crucified her. Scott watched her with me, as did Lars. The death mask placed itself firmly upon her head so the eyelids lined up with her eyes, the lips lined up with her wind pipe, everything lined up with everything. Her skin, while it was smooth and flawless, was something that I could tell had been crafted out of them corpses.

“Go to hell, you sack of shit!” Charlie bellowed as he kicked the door. Scott backed up towards me and I set a hand on his shoulder. Lars lingered close to me. Frankie huddled up behind us. I turned my head to find Charlie with his back pressed up to the door.

Maya opened her eyes and gazed on at us. Her eyes were cold and blank, colder and blanker than the being we found outside.

“Hello, gentlemen,” she greeted us in a normal voice with a British accent. There was something off about her voice, though, like there was an odd ringing echo to it: it could've been from the size of the room, or the fact she had just come to life and was ready to do something, or—

“The clock is ticking,” she whispered.

“For who?” Scott asked her; his voice trembled. She didn't reply: instead, she strode down the ramp like a regular old human girl.

“Who's the clock tickin' for?” Frankie asked her in a small voice. I had never witnessed them this afraid of anything before, not even when we were up on stage performing.

“Maya?” Lars called to her. She stopped and stared at him. She didn't move.

I felt the floor fall away from underneath my feet. The floor rose up around me: the last thing I saw was Scott calling down at me with a frightened look on his face. I fell into total darkness. I couldn't help it: I added in a little vibrato in there, too. It was the only way they could hear me and know that it was me falling down that chute.

There was another scream next to mine, albeit a feminine one. I couldn't see her so I couldn't tell if it was Maya or someone else next to me…

I landed feet first in a pile of tiny boxes. I landed right on my ass and felt my knees buckle upon impact. I almost lost my balance but by some miracle, I caught myself and reclined on my elbows. My coat sprawled open so I could look down and see my zipper was undone.

Whoever fell down the chute with me raised her head from the pile of boxes—which took me a second to realize they were all coffin shaped; in the mix of it all were tiny skulls, none of which looked real or legitimate—and showed me her little bob of blonde hair and her black leather jacket.

“Mrs. Hamilton!” I declared.

“Joey!” she greeted me as she lunged for me.

“Oh, God—” I threw my arms around her and she did the same for me. I felt her hand caress down my hip.

“Mmm, skinny boy with a nice round ass,” she whispered in my ear, which in turn made me blush.

“Where are the others?” she asked me.

“Upstairs—come with me—” And I had no idea where I was going, either. But I managed to somersault over the boxes and skulls onto the floor and then roll onto my side. She followed me down onto the floor. I landed on my stomach and my knees, both instances of which hurt like hell. It didn't help matters Mrs. Hamilton pinched my ass as she passed by me, either.

“Ow—fuck—” I muttered. I climbed onto my hands and knees when she yelped out.

“AH!”

“What?” I demanded as I clambered to my feet.

“Rats!”

“Where?” I glanced about the darkness for them.

“There!”

“Where there?”

“Right there, Chief!”

In fact, there were a bunch of rats scurrying about the hard floor before us. We were in New York City after all, but I had no clue if this was the sewer or what. All I could see was darkness and the hard barren concrete floor around us. We landed on a pile of coffins and bones somewhere underneath the headquarters for the _New York Times_.

“It's alright,” I assured her, and my voice echoed through the tunnel. “They won't hurt us—at least, if we don't do anythin' that'll make us do sump'n—let's see if we can find a way out...”

“And just where do you think you're going?” I stopped dead in my tracks. Mrs. Hamilton peered back at me with her eyes big and her eyebrows raised up.

I turned around and gazed out to the darkness behind us. Nobody there.

I swallowed again as I felt Mrs. Hamilton's hand caress my lower back.

“Is someone there?” I called out. Anyone who knew me could know my upstate accent from a City one anywhere, so I don't know what I was thinking there. I breathed out a low whistle as we were met with complete silence.

“Hello?” I called out again.

In the dim light, I made out the sight of toes of shoes. All of them looked exactly identical to each other. They all were the same height as each other. All of them identical. All of them.

“Joey,” she whispered. I turned my head to find more of them in the darkness to my left. We turned around to find more behind us.

Mrs. Hamilton and I were surrounded. Surrounded every which way we turned and glanced about the place. All the clones of Maya. All of them with big bloodshot red eyes and pitch dark veins emerging from their faces like the cobwebs outside. All of them out for my flesh and blood once the clock was up... and I had no idea when each of them were made so the one closest to me might be malfunctioning at that very moment and I wouldn't know it.

Welp, so much for me dying while singing “Blackbird.” I was going to die by way of a shitload of robot girls eating my ass.


	26. axe wound

My throat itched a bit from being in the tunnel and also from the fact I had screamed at the top of my lungs whilst falling down that chute above us. But mainly from the fact Mrs. Hamilton and I were in a tunnel full of clones and rats. She huddled close to me, complete with a whimper in her throat.

“What do they want from us?” she whispered to me.

“I dunno... and I dunno if they're functioning properly, either.”

“Well, how do we tell?” she asked me.

“You're askin' me that?!”

“Well, I'm just asking, Joey.”

“Well, no offense, but you're askin' the wrong guy.”

The clone closest to me raised a hand to me. Her eyes seemed to grind right through me like an axe: they were cold and callous like the blade of an axe ready to knock me down to my knees. I hunched my shoulders and lowered my head so I wouldn't have to look into her eyes. I felt Mrs. Hamilton huddle even closer to me.

“Do that—” the clone whispered to me: her British accent caressed over me like the tip of a feather.

“Do what?” I asked her: I felt my throat close up.

“What—you did—as you fell down,” she finished.

“You mean—scream?”

“With—the wave like motion of it behind it.”

I didn't know what she meant by that, but at the same time I thought I did.

“You mean, my vibrato?”

Mrs. Hamilton then gasped.

“Joey, do you know what this means?” she quipped; she turned me around and clasped me by the shoulders.

“What?”

“They love your voice! Even when you're in sheer terror!”

I licked my lips as I peered about the space before us. There had to have been dozens of those clones, complete with some of those big black scummy sewer rats. I peered up to the rafters overhead, as pitch black as night itself. Deadly nightshade, ready to expound itself upon the underground world beneath the City. And yet it seemed darker than normal: I would have thought that the sewers beneath the City had some kind of ambient lighting of some sort for workers. It just made sense to me; but the sole light came from the chute right over my head.

“Sing, Joey!” Mrs. Hamilton commanded as her voice echoed off the walls of the sewer all around us. “Sing, Joey! SING!”

I peered up to the chute over our heads. I thought back to when I first joined Anthrax and I had belted out “Metal Thrashing Mad” on the _Armed and Dangerous_ record for the first time. Everyone told me it was to be the finest performance I would ever do, even though I had done more and more following that and that song was merely the beginning for me. I guess my voice really had that much of a clout to hypnotize some flesh crafted robots to maybe allow us out of this tunnel.

“Okay,” I breathed out as I turned my head back towards Mrs. Hamilton. “Ya might wanna cover your ears. This is gonna get loud.”

I closed my eyes. I fetched up a sigh to better open up my lungs and my throat. I brought my hands to my chest. I pictured the riff, that crunchy tasty riff courtesy of Scott and Danny, complete with an extra nuance on part of Charlie and Frankie. I opened my mouth—

Surely, if they didn't hear me, I had enough in my throat to wake up the dead. My voice echoed throughout the rafters and over the floor of the tunnel. I brought my hands down to my stomach but I kept my head tilted back as though I was giving a solo at a recital.

That scream. That yelp.

“ _Racing down the road, in a street machine of STEEL_!” That particular note soared through the tunnel enough to cause some kind of shuddering. Like when a couple of birds are flying out from underneath an underpass and they flutter their wings real hard. The rafters were extra dark because—

And because I'm a genius, I forgot one of the lines.

“ _I'm a madman at the wheel!_ ” The rafters were extra dark because there was something there. Something that could probably save us, and thus I sang out from the deepest corners of myself.

“ _GOT MY FOOT PINNED TO THE FLOOR! YOU CAN HEAR THE ENGINES ROAR! GOT THUNDER IN MY HAND! AND IT'S METAL THRASHING MA AA AA AA AA AA AA AA AAD YOW!!”_ A vibrato as smooth as butter.“ _METAL THRASHING MA AA AA AA AA AA AA AA AAD! YOW! METAL THRASHING_ —”

I only ever hit that really high falsetto note once and it was right after I joined and performed before a thrash audience the first time.

“— _ **MA AA AA AA AA AA AA AA AAD**_!”

The bats screeched and soared down from the rafters overhead. I felt Mrs. Hamilton yank down on my shoulder.

I fell to my knees on the hard floor. I bowed my head as the bats washed over the heads of the clones. Mrs. Hamilton huddled closer to me so as to protect me.

The word “mom” ran through my mind right then. I wondered if my mom knew about all of this going on given she and my dad lived outside of Syracuse. At the end of the day, I was still a boy who loved his mom.

And the only mom I had with me, right next to me...

She put her arms around my body and held me close. To think she nursed both Cindy and Gwen with that chest. I wanted to bury my face in that chest. Just make it a pillow for a bit.

But then again, I was being ambushed by a bunch of bats, all of which might have had rabies for all I knew, and yet all I wanted was to make a pair of tits my pillow. I was surrounded by bats and clones on a time bomb of sorts.

The bats' screeches filled my ears: like fingernails on a chalkboard. But Mrs. Hamilton's hands caressing all along on my sides assured me that it would be alright. That it wasn't the end.

That everything was going to be okay if I just focused on my own breathing. On what kept me alive.

What kept me alive against the wall of noise choking me. Suffocating me.

“Joey? Mrs. Hamilton?”

I opened my eyes. The tunnel was empty. The clones had either been eaten alive by bats, or they dissipated long enough for us to get out of there. That is, if we could.

“Joey, look up,” she whispered to me. I did, and I spotted Scott, Charlie, Frankie, and Lars at the top of the chute: I noticed Scott holding something dark, something that looked like rope. I let go of Mrs. Hamilton and stood to my feet because I had no idea what they were going to do, especially since we weren't right underneath the chute so to speak. There still stood that pile of coffins and skulls right before us.

“Is everything alright down there?” Frankie called down.

“We were surrounded by clones galore!” I shouted up the chute, and my voice broke.

“Well, you might wanna get out of there,” Charlie called down to me. “And stat, too.”

“The clones are all going to—” Lars was cut off by Mrs. Hamilton's blood curdling scream.

“JOEY!” I whirled around to find her being yanked back by the clones, each of them with fiery red eyes that glowed like embers. Their hands were hard and metallic, strong enough to break her bones if they wished.

“SHIT!” Charlie and Frankie yelled out in unison. I lunged for her in hopes to get her out of their grasp. They were too strong for me even, too strong for the former hockey player. But I yanked at her right as Scott tossed down the rope. Get her out of there and hold onto that damn rope.

Fighting the clones felt like fighting a mountain. They were stronger than me, and perhaps strong enough to kill both me and her in a single stroke of the arm. I pinched my arms shut as I tugged at Mrs. Hamilton to release them from their grip. I didn't want to lose her, but I also didn't want to lose my ankles and my knees in a little game of tug of war. A game that I was apparently losing: one of them held onto my forearm and dug her fingers into the sleeve of my coat. That fabric was going to hold up for only so long.

I could feel my knees buckle. I was about to be torn apart by those cold callous machines that didn't care if I had flesh or long curly hair.

Lars let out the biggest belch I ever heard him give—right next to my ear no less—and the clones backed off. I yanked Mrs. Hamilton out of there and the three of us lunged back to the rope. I scrambled over the coffins and the skulls. I was ready to climb up the wall if I had to: Mrs. Hamilton and Lars were right behind me.

“Heave!” I heard Frankie yell out, and the three of us rose high over the pile and the clones. I practically ran up the wall: sure, I used to be a hockey player but I still could run like the dickens, even if the surface was vertical.

The three of them gave another yank of the rope and I reached the top. I almost fell ass over teakettle right on top of Scott, but it was enough to give the rope another tug back, and Mrs. Hamilton soon followed me.

A stray clone had held onto the rope right behind Lars; we peered down the chute to find her groping his throat and his chest.

“Fuck the fuck off, you fuckin' parasite!” Lars shouted.

“They can split apart,” I muttered. And sure enough, he shoved her off of him and she hit the wall. Mrs. Hamilton and I yanked on the rope so he could rise up himself. Maya splattered against the cold metal. Blood and flesh rained down the chute, and missed him by mere inches.

He rose up out of the chute and landed on me. I landed on my back and he lay on top of my chest.

“Thank you—little—lion man,” I sputtered.

“Little lion man, is that what you called me?” he asked me, out of breath.

“Yeah. 'Cause you're a fierce little guy with a lot of pride in what you do and in your ensemble. Yer—yer a good guy, Lars.”

“You're even better, Joey,” his voice crackled. “You're actually sweet.”

“By the way—” I brought my attention to Scott, Frankie, and Charlie, all of whom congregated around us. “—where'd you get that rope?”

“It was part of the conveyor belt,” Frankie explained as he dragged in the black rope: I took a second look to find it was smooth and sinewy, like the cord of a conveyor belt.

“I told them it was a bad idea,” Lars quipped right into my face, “but we needed something to hoist the two of you out of there.”

“Why is it a bad—” I was cut off by the sight of Maya's head having risen up from the chute, in the form of a detached face from a fabricated head. Wires jutted out from underneath her face like loose threads. Her eyes were red and bloodshot with anger.

I could only assume the worst.

“Oh, come on, guys.”


	27. i smell a massacre

Lars climbed off of me and helped me up to my feet. The clones were coming after us, complete with red eyes and claws growing right out of their fingers, something I was not expecting in the least.

“Come on, boys!” Mrs. Hamilton declared. The six of us ran blindly out of there: all I knew was Lars held onto my shoulders and pretty much shoved me out of the door. I was ready to fall when Charlie said... said something about... something about cheese?

“Jeez!”

Oh.

Lars kept pushing me, even though I could run just fine. I thought about Candace as she absolutely crammed her gullet full of paper and I wondered if all of this had to do with her doing that. I thought about Lars himself, and how there wasn't what he said there was in that butcher's room. I wanted to know what was going on with him in particular. He had to know something about Maya and Candace, something he refused to tell us for whatever reason.

If I had to find a way to force it out of him, I would do it. As long as it wasn't in the face, I was willing to do it.

Next thing I knew I was outside. Outside in the rain. The darkness and the neon and the rain.

Lars and I reached the curb right as those big rain droplets fell upon our heads.

“Joey, the car!” He pointed to Mrs. Hamilton's car on the other side of the street. I was quick to make my way over there for myself: I was sure I would weave in between and out of the rain droplets if I had to. I couldn't hardly shake those bright red lights from my mind. Red like blood.

I jiggled the handle on the passenger side, and then I remembered the window had fallen out. In other words, the rain had utterly soaked that side of the car without either of us looking, and also with me forgetting all about it.

I reached inside of the window to open the door from the inside but it was useless because the damn thing had been jammed.

I hoisted my knee onto the edge of the door, and stuck one leg inside, followed by my head. I climbed into the car even with the door jammed shut; it was even more tricky given I planted my ass right in a puddle. My ass was soaking wet and the rain continued to fall right on my arm and shoulder even as I gathered myself. I felt the rain water trickle down my scalp, right through the roots of my hair and towards the sides of my neck.

Something caught my eye right there on the center console.

“The radar detector,” I muttered.

“Joey!” Lars shouted over the roar of the rain.

“Lars!” I echoed.

“Joey, look what I found!” He whipped out those ice skates, the same ones from the warehouse. How he swiped those without either of us looking was beyond me.

“Of course,” I breathed out at the sight of them. I nudged a thick lock of curly black hair away from my eyes and nose to better examine them.

“They split apart with force—” I recalled.

One clone emerged from behind him and Lars took a swipe at the head. One single swipe was all he needed to take out the head, but not without rupturing those major veins all the while. Blood gushed out from the neck as the body fell to the drenched pavement.

“Holy shit,” Charlie called out from behind him. A second clone emerged from the shadows behind Lars, eyes blood red and claws razor sharp.

“Lars, LOOK OUT!” I yelled out the window. He whirled around and swung his arm about so as to knock off her head. Blood spilled on the pavement and I couldn't help but laugh at it. Granted, those veins were important and carried a great deal of blood, but it felt akin to watching a geyser. So much blood for such slender sinewy veins.

“Holy hell,” I heard Lars say as he padded over to the car: blood stained the sides and soles of the skates; I took a closer look to find the blades absolutely drenched with that blood, and I wondered if it was real at all or just some kind of concoction made up in that warehouse. He put the skates in the trunk and then slipped into the backseat behind me.

Charlie and Scott followed, and then Frankie squeezed in right behind me. Mrs. Hamilton rounded the hood and slipped into the seat right next to me.

“Oh, Jesus,” she groaned at the sight of the window and the rain water falling onto my arm and shoulder.

“Yeah, you're tellin' me,” I pointed out as I brought my arm close to my body but it was about as useless as shaking my arm out the window

“Where are the keys,” she quipped. Something else caught my eye. I rose my head to peer out the window. Two more clones were headed our way from the shadows. They looked to be coming right for me because I shook the tunnel. I brought the bats down from the rafters. I caused that stir. I caused that stir when I was brought into the whole thing with them on accident. And now I was going to be dog meat for these clones.

Mrs. Hamilton delved around her side of the car for the keys, much to my chagrin.

“Um, Mrs. Hamilton?” I said. “Mrs. Hamilton—”

“Mrs. Hamilton!” Scott exclaimed.

“What?”

She raised her head from the floor and spotted the clones coming for us.

“AH!”

She brought her attention to the floor again and scooped up the keys. She stuck the one inside and the car roared to life. It was going to be a long ride home in that ramshackle thing but we had to get out of the City. Before we did anything, though, one clone hit the window right behind me. Just body slammed it. The plexiglas shattered all over Frankie and Scott's laps. I couldn't see what was going on because the other one was headed right for me.

I wasn't buckled in and I climbed in with ease given how skinny I am: I raised my legs and kangaroo kicked her right square in the chest. The clone fell bass ackwards into a puddle and Mrs. Hamilton drove us away in time before the other one did anything more to Frankie and Scott.

I was laying on my back on the seat next to her with my feet up to the ceiling, and I couldn't do anything about it.

“Are you guys alright?” she asked Frankie and Scott.

“Yeah, Frankie punched her right square in the face,” Scott explained in a single breath, “and I was bound to break her hand off before she did anything to me, but driving away did the trick.” He fetched up a sigh.

“We are not out of the woods, though,” Lars pointed out.

“Not even a little bit,” I grumbled.

“You think we can nurse this thing back to Syracuse?” Charlie asked her. “It _was_ in two accidents after all.”

“I'll try,” she told us. “Let's at least try and get out of town first—maybe towards Monticello or something—so we can do something about these two windows.”

“Yeah, 'cause I ain't goin' four hours with the pouring rain on me,” I declared as I lifted myself back onto my ass so the rain wouldn't soak me on the backs of my thighs any more.

“Me, neither,” said Frankie. We got a couple of miles away from there when we were met with sputtering and stuttering.

“God damn it,” she grumbled. “God dammit, come on—”

“I have some loose change on me if we have to call someone from a pay phone,” Lars told her.

“Okay—well, let's hope we don't break down in the middle of upstate.”

Mrs. Hamilton kept her eye on the road up ahead but I was more concerned about the fact Frankie and I were being rained on. We got about a few blocks until we reached the last gas station before the freeway. She bounded into the driveway which caused some water puddles to splash up on either side of us. I leaned in closer to Mrs. Hamilton so it would miss me. I felt bad for Frankie, though.

She reached the protective awning over the pumps so we could be dry.

She killed the engine and we let out a collective sigh. That car was fucked, I knew that much.

“Good Lord,” she muttered.

“Wanna call Cindy or Gwendolyn?” Lars offered.

“Might as well—”

He jingled the change in his coat pockets as she climbed out of there for it. I raked my fingers through my curls, which were soaking wet from the fallen rain. Frankie and Scott sputtered from the splashing of the puddle. The five of us hung there for a few moments before one of us said anything; I had no idea if anyone had used this gas station in a while.

“Should we get out?” Charlie offered.

“Might as well,” I said. I swiped the keys as I climbed over the center console and towards the driver's side door. I climbed out of the car and stood there as I dripped wet from the rain. Charlie and Lars followed suit right behind me. Scott ran his hand over the crown of his head and shook it about. Frankie sputtered from the rain water as he climbed out, too.

“You got the radar detector?” I asked Lars.

“Right here,” he showed it to me.

“How 'bout the skates?” Scott added.

“They're bloody as fuck, though,” Lars pointed out.

“Li'l water and some polish can clean 'em up,” I told him.

“We are in the industrial side of New York City, too,” Frankie added as he wiped his face with his sleeve.

“That was quick,” Charlie spoke out of the blue. I turned to find Mrs. Hamilton striding over to us with her head bowed away from the rain.

“I didn't waste any time saying what had happened to us,” she told us, “we're right by the freeway so it's not like she'll miss us, either. So—three or four hours give or take.”

She then turned to me with a thoughtful look on her face. I was soaked. Soaked and spooked after having been in that tunnel with her, and yet she comforted me in those seconds when I thought we were going to die down there. I swallowed, given the state of her car. It was all of our doing, but I had dragged us into this.

“Sorry, Leela,” I confessed to her. Mrs. Hamilton leaned in towards me; even though we had been through a lot in the past few days alone, her lips still glistened like fresh ripe cherries. My stomach tightened as she brought her face even closer to me. I thought of Cindy, and I knew she was nearby there, somewhere in the strip club. I wanted her, but Mrs. Hamilton was there right before my face. She closed her eyes and took in a whiff from the side of my head.

“You still smell like Cindy,” she whispered into my ear. I didn't know what she meant by that, so I showed her a little lopsided smile as I handed her the keys.

“She's coming for us, too,” she added. “But don't apologize. You're a sweet boy.”

“Four hours,” I said in a soft voice.

“Four hours—and your little wet booty'll be nice and dry before you know it.”

She patted the side of my face and showed me a smile. While I was glad we were out of there and away from them, I couldn't help but feel like we had merely opened the door. We had to walk through the hallway before we knew the full story of Maya and Candace, and ultimately, the fate of New York and ourselves.


End file.
